Measuring preferential attachment mechanism in citation network basing on sliding time windows

The preferential attachment mechanism (PAM) in citation network is studied dependent on papers´ past citations obtained in different time windows. Experiment shows that the correlation between papers´ attachment rate Π(k,t) and the past citations reaches peak in time window t=1, but then decays continually when enlarging the time window gradually. It indicates that the citations obtained in the recent one-year period will be the kernel factor to determine papers´ attachment property. And negative effects would be brought to PAM if more citations in larger time windows were considered. Basing on the past citations obtained in t=1, the traditional PAM was modified as Π(k,t)”k₁. Experiment shows that the modified PAM has acquired a very good linear dependence between Π(k,t) and the citations in t=1.