“Makes you feel so, sort of, insignificant, doesn’t it?”

To quote Monty Python. Tom Smith has the sad truth here. An excerpt:

A voice, crying in the wilderness, and then just crying

By Tom Smith

I just got some new data back from Lexis, with whom I am engaged in a massive citation study, but that’s another story. This data concerns law review articles that are in their Shepard’s database and how much they get cited. This data covers about 385,000 law review articles, notes, comments, etc. etc. that appear in 726 law reviews and journals, and looks at how often they are cited. Cited by other law reviews, or cases.

First of all, 43 percent of the articles are not cited . . . at all. Zero, nada, zilch. Almost 80 percent (i.e. 79 percent) of law review articles get ten or fewer citations. …

Yoi and Double Yoi!

Now they’re really piling on. Does anyone else feel a midlife crisis coming on?