Superstring theory: Information transfer in an emerging field

This paper traced an individual paper through the literature as it garnered citations. This paper was chosen because of its seminal nature in a highly controversial area of theoretical physics. The distribution of citations was tested against models suggested byPrice andKuhn as well as compared to other studies which also examined benchmark papers. The results indicate that the paper chosen behaved in a significantly different way from most of the prior models. The suggestion is made that further study of this and papers like it will add much to the theory of information transfer in science.