A study on recency patterns of cited resources in the cytokine publications from web of science

Abstract

The main aim of this article is to study the trends of cited articles and their recency cited value, weighted recency and average weighted recency of each cited item in the articles published on the subject of cytokine from 1998 to 2022 by using statistical methods based on sampling. The objectives include outlining data collection methods, discussing limitations, and employing analytical tools for data interpretation. Data was gathered from the Web of Knowledge using the search term “Cytokine,” covering various cited items such as books, theses, dissertations, and websites while excluding citations without publication years and those for reviews and editorials. Self-citations and co-citations were included. The study calculates recency values and weighted recency of citations, converting the data into tabular and graphical formats for analysis. Year-wise data from 1989 to 2020 was analyzed, to key findings reveal that articles from 2020 had the highest average weighted recency, indicating more recent citations. This study result reveals that the average weighted recency of the citations of the articles published in 2020 is more than in other sample years. This indicates that the articles published in 2021 are of more recent origin than those of other years.