Tracking knowledge diffusion through citations

Citations in the serial literature provide a method of investigating how published biomedical research influences work in other countries, in other subject areas and at different research levels (from clinical to basic). This paper examines four successive generations of papers citing to a set of UK arthritis papers to evaluate its ‘down-stream’ influence. The citing papers are progressively more international, less within the arthritis sub-field and on average more basic (not more clinical) in character. Most of these findings can be plausibly attributed to differences in the referencing behaviour of biomedical researchers working at different research levels and in different countries. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.