Time series of outgrow indices

The outgrow index measures to which extent an article outgrows – in terms of citations – the references on which it is based. In this article, three types of time series of outgrow indices and one outgrow index matrix are introduced. Examples of these time series are given illustrating the newly introduced concepts. These time series expand the toolbox for citation analysis by focusing on a specific subnetwork of the global citation network. It is stated that citation analysis has three application areas: information retrieval, research evaluation and structural citation network studies. This contribution is explicitly placed among structural network studies.