Forecast String Research Citing in 2005: 11 or More?

[marcus]

ellipse raised this issue of "string deadend?" or where is string research going. like, is it currently in a slump but will pick up later? or is it going down the tubes, or what?

so if you want to, let's put down what we forecast for 2005 and then later, probably early next year when the results are in, we can check who guessed closest.

In 2000 there were 21 recent string papers that got 100+ citations.
The list is here
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/top40.2000.shtml
By recent, I mean published any time in the previous 5 years (1996 through 2000).

In 2004 there were 8 recent string papers that got 100+ citations,
the list is here
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/annual.shtml
and recent means the previous 5 years (2000 through 2004).

Citations (how many times other scholarly papers cite a given paper in their references) is a pragmatic indicator of how interesting or important or influential research is. research that other scholars think is important tends to get cited a lot. The citation count is not a perfect index but it is used a lot. That is why Stanford/SLAC library tabulates it.

The drop in string citations between 2000 and 2004 is more marked if you look at the really highly cited papers, that get 125+. Then you see there were 16 recent such string papers in 2000 and only FOUR in 2004. But just for definiteness let's forecast the number of papers that get 100+ citations---there were 8 of them in 2004.

And one can minimize the importance of this, or explain it away in various ways, or say that it is just a temporary slump, or doesn't mean anything. That is all fine, but anyway it is a change in a number which happened, and we can ask WHAT WILL THAT NUMBER BE IN 2005?
Let's see what different forecasts we make and check later to see who got closest.

How many recent string papers will get 100+ citations in 2005?

Like the glory days: 11 or more
Happiness returns: 10
Bit more than last year: 9
Same as last year: 8
Bit less than last year: 7
Bad news, slump continues: 6
Yikes!: 5 or less

If you would like to, or if I goof and the poll mechanism doesn't register who guessed what, please post your guess and I will keep track.

 

[marcus]

that was quick! Thank you Igor_S!
Now at least it is a horserace between us two.

[EDIT, later]Oh no!, selfAdjoint is pessimistically predicting 6!

Our forecasts, so far, as follows.

How many recent string papers will get 100+ citations in 2005?

marcus: Same as last year, 8
Igor_S: One less than last year, 7
selfAdjoint: Slump continues, 6
============

[EDIT, still later]

Meteor has joined us in forecasting string citations for the current year. Here is an update on who predicts what:

Meteor: One better than last year, 9
marcus: Same as last year, 8
Igor_S: One less than last year, 7
selfAdjoint: Slump continues, 6

 

[notevenwrong]

Hi Marcus,

Fun for the whole family!

I'm guessing 5-6 papers from 2001-2005 with >100 citations, and I'll even tell you which ones they'll be, roughly in order. I voted already and put 5 in my vote, but had forgotten about one. But leave my vote at 5, I think the last two on this list will be close to 100 citations and one of them may not make it.

KKLT hep-th/0301240
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves hep-th/0202021
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications hep-th/0105097
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory hep-th/0308055
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory hep-th/0106048
Witten on strings on twistor space hep-th/0312171

Peter

 

[Spin_Network]

Put me down for exactly 4, with a surprise of NO Ed Witten paper!

This will surely be the tolling of the "division bell"

 

[marcus]

Here is an update on who predicts what:

Meteor: One better than last year, 9
marcus: Same as last year, 8
Igor_S: One less than last year, 7
selfAdjoint: Slump continues, 6
Peter Woit (notevenwrong): Yikes! 5
Spin_Network: More yikes! 4

 

[marcus]

for those who haven't met "notevenwrong" yet, here is his blog:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/

selfAdjoint first told me about Peter's blog, I think he started a thread about it, or flagged it in the link-basket thread. the name of Peter's blog is a quote from Wolfgang Pauli who said contemptuously of some proposed theory that it was "so bad it is not even wrong!"

Peter is going further here than just guessing how many recent string papers will be highly cited this year. He is actually going on record predicting WHICH PAPERS THEY WILL BE! He lists 6 that might make the 100+ citations mark.


KKLT http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0301240
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0202021
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0105097
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0308055
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0106048
Witten on strings on twistor space http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0312171

If all 6 get 100+ citations, and they are the only ones, then it is Bingo for selfAdjoint.

 

[marcus]

Peter has posted a link to slides from the talks given at this week's String 05 conference in Toronto

http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/audio/05-06/#strings

not a bad way to see what's happening in the various lands of string

here's the list of scheduled speakers and the titles of their talks
http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/04-05/string-theory/strings2005/speakers.html

more talks' audio and slides will presumably become available later, for now media for only a couple of talks are online

 

[Gokul43201]

Hello again, Mar

I'll say about 5-ish.

 

[marcus]

Hi Gokul, thanks for contributing a prediction!

Meteor: One better than last year, 9
marcus: Same as last year, 8
Igor_S: One less than last year, 7
selfAdjoint: Slump continues, 6
Peter Woit (notevenwrong): Yikes! 5
Gokul: 5-ish
Spin_Network: More yikes! 4

 

[marcus]

it's my impression that the seven who have so-far ventured to take a guess here could carry on a lively and convivial conversation, on lots of topics, not just string theory, were they to meet. A pleasure to be of your company, gentlemen.

we seem to have the bases pretty well covered here. does anyone have anything ELSE they'd like to see predicted?---but please if you do, let it have a nice numerical index that we can find online somewhere without having to do research on research to find it out!

 

[Chronos]

Being bold by nature, I predict non-TOE QG papers will out-cite string papers in 2006.

 

[marcus]

Being bold by nature, I predict non-TOE QG papers will out-cite string papers in 2006.

it's a thought, but you may have accidentally typed 2006 when you meant 3006

there are roughly 10 times more string theorists, and citations tend to be within research communities or fields (the definitions might start getting circular, a research community is a group of scholars who cite each other...)

so gross citation numbers reflect the size of the field, the number of researchers already in it, and comparisons between fields ...well you get the idea.

the better string papers, even in a bad year, will be apt to garner roughly 10 times more citations than their non-string QG counterparts. order of magnitude. at least that's been true in the past.

If there are any more interesting indices for us to look at (and maybe we've done all that's worthwhile, but if there are) then they would probably be about changes over time within some field. not cross-field comparisons, anyway that's my thought on it

Chronos, I've been listing the numbers people guess and i am interested what number you would predict ("5 or less" is a range not a number). Would you care to pick a favorite?

 

[marcus]

I was going to ask selfAdjoint or Gokul to close the poll, but decided not to.
We might still get interesting stuff in this thread,
so I deleted my request

 

[selfAdjoint]

Basically I put 6 because reading the blogs of Distler, Motl, etc. I got the feeling this is not a year of deep productive papers in SST, but a year of clever technical approaches "way up the abstraction tree" as Korzybski would have said. Such papers don't get 100 cites. It doesn't prove SST is dead, just that it's in one of its periodic doldrums.

 

[marcus]

In 2000 there were 21 recent string papers that got 100+ citations.
The list is here
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/top40.2000.shtml
By recent, I mean published any time in the previous 5 years (1996 through 2000).

In 2004 there were 8 recent string papers that got 100+ citations,
the list is here
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/annual.shtml
and recent means the previous 5 years (2000 through 2004).
...

Hi selfAdjoint, I put 8, for 2005, because that's the same as last year and i don't sense any big difference. But i think I understand your reasoning and I think 6 is a sensible forecast. In any case you might just turn out to have picked the winning number! by whatever process of guesstimation and hunchery. I see that Peter identified 6 candidates he thought might possibly break the 100 mark.

 

[marcus]

The last time I updated the list of forecasts it was

...
Meteor: One better than last year, 9
marcus: Same as last year, 8
Igor_S: One less than last year, 7
selfAdjoint: Slump continues, 6
Peter Woit (notevenwrong): Yikes! 5
Gokul: 5-ish
Spin_Network: More yikes! 4

Now there are 10 people in the poll and our predictions are

How many recent string papers will get 100+ citations in 2005?

One better than last year, 9: Meteor
Same as last year, 8: Locrian and I
One less than last year, 7: Igor_S
Slump continues, 6: selfAdjoint
Yikes! 5: Peter Woit, Ohwilleke, Chronos
5-ish: Gokul
More yikes! 4: Spin_Network

I suppose the most noticeable thing about the predicitions, whether they are 9 or 4 or in between, is the difference from past years. for instance in the year 2000 the number was 21, more than twice our high estimate for 2005.

 

[marcus]

Peter Woit has offered a list of 6 recent (publ. 2001-2005) papers which he thinks might reach the 100 citations mark this year.
Has anyone checked to see how many citations each of these papers *already has* accumulated this year? I have not. It would not be hard, I think---just take a few minutes using arxiv or the SLAC/Stanford search.

I think Peter said he would have intended to guess 6, and merely by oversight said 5 (but didnt want me to correct his guess).

Here is his list:

KKLT http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0301240
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0202021
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0105097
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0308055
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0106048
Witten on strings on twistor space http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0312171

KKLT is the January 2003 paper which is the immediate cause of the present turmoil and agony in string research-----KKLT gave researchers the "Landscape" of 10¹⁰⁰ possible groundstates for the theory, or vacuum states, as they are called. Some big number of possible versions of physics, with an apparent inability to select out and predict one distinct version (so one might test to see if the prediction is wrong or right). So it would not be too surprising for the KKLT paper to be cited a lot, like the stone in the shoe.

 

[marcus]

Lubos encouraging homily---don't give up, string is the way.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/07/next-revolution.html

these are dark days when PhD students are questioning what they should really be writing their theses about. there was a panel discussion at String 05 about the present state and prospects of the string research program and some expression of discouragement and doubts got on Distler's blog afterwards.

Lubos has responded with a longish blog which says basically not to be downhearted, string is the way, don't give up the ship.
he comes across as quite likeable in this one, although he rakes Jacques Distler over the coals about something, with his accustomed relish.

=========some related links===========
Here is the online poster for the panel discussion, which was hopefully titled "The Next Superstring Revolution".
http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/04-05/string-theory/strings2005/panel.html

After hearing the discussion a PhD student named Florian Gmeiner wrote that he was quite depressed. Another PhD student Marty Tysanner was critical of Distler for not reporting his sense of the panel discussion because it might be relevant to people choosing a research area to work in.

Here is Florian's post on a string blog kept by J. Distler
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/000593.html#c002467

Here is Marty's post
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/000593.html#c002483

Here is the conversation so far:

Florian: "Hi, it’s a pity that you don’t comment on the panel discussion.
Being a phd student I feel quite depressed after having listened to it."

Distler's reply: "My best suggestion is to ignore such silly exercises and get on with the business of doing physics."

Marty: "I too am a phd student (starting second year), interested in high energy theory, and am puzzled by your advice to “ignore such silly exercises and get on with the business of doing physics.” I didn’t attend the conference, but have the impression that the panel discussion was relevant to making an informed decision about risks of studying string theory. If that is correct, wouldn’t it be better to lay the cards on the table and discuss it openly so that students have the best available information to make an intelligent decision about their future? To be silent about possible big problems or act as though they don’t exist in the interest of “just doing physics” seems more appropriate to participation in a belief system than doing good science. There seems to be a lot of poorly informed opinion on the subject; let’s hear about it from an informed source!"

Jacques Distler then replied to Marty as follows:

"The topic of the Panel discussion was “The Next String Revolution.” If you think that a bunch of people prognosticating about future “revolutions” in their field is of the slightest relevance to anything, then I have a bridge you might be interested in buying …

'… making an informed decision about risks of studying string theory.'

A formulation of the question that only a reader of Peter Woit’s blog would come up with.

Lookit, if you’re trying to decide what to work on, you want to see what progress people are making in the field now, not what progress they think they will be making 10 years from now.

Lots of interesting talks at this conference (I wish I had the energy to blog about more than a handful). Lots of interesting things going on in the field. I don’t get the sense that people feel “stuck,” or are thrashing about for stuff to do.

As a graduate student, you need to find something to work on now, not 10 years from now. So these prognostications — even if they were accurate, which they surely are not — are irrelevant to you.

The other thing you need to do as a graduate student is get trained as broadly as possible. I didn’t mention the survey talks on LHC physics (Friday) and Cosmology (Monday), but there is real data coming in and much more to start coming soon to our field; you need to be prepared to think about it.

The most intelligent thing said at the panel discussion was when Martin Rocek (in a question from the audience) suggested that people should be thinking about neutrino masses. They’re being observed now, and they’re a window into very high energy (M new?10 15 GeV) physics.

I, personally, would much rather think about that, rather than about when the next Revolution is coming."

Parallel stuff on Peter Woit's blog:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000218.html

 

[marcus]

Sean Carroll new blog: "string is the most promising"

Sean Carroll a blogger cosmologist---smart articulate and often funny---has a new blog, a group blog with a handful of his friends. He has just posted a kind of pep-talk for string.

there are lots of comments including from some who post at PF on occasion (arivero, notevenwrong)

the new group blog is called Cosmic Variance:
http://cosmicvariance.com/

today's blog by Sean Carroll is:
http://cosmicvariance.com/2005/07/21/two-cheers-for-string-theory/

Sean's blog is basically very upbeat and pro-string. I mention this partly for balance. The numbers are discouraging and apparently there is some doubt and unease among young string researchers. there are speeches like from Lubos that clearly are intended to shore up morale. And there is this cheerful upbeat talk from Sean. I feel like I have to include some of all to get a rounded picture.

 

[Berislav]

According to Citebase:

KKLT - 396
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves - 698
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications - 393
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory - 201
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory - 485
Witten on strings on twistor space - 138

 

[marcus]

According to Citebase:

KKLT - 396
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves - 698
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications - 393
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory - 201
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory - 485
Witten on strings on twistor space - 138

Hi Berislav, glad to hear from you and that you are interested in citation numbers. what you have reported here are not, I believe, the numbers we are talking about, which is the number of citations occurring this year. I think what you have are the all years TOTALS. It would be interesting if you would like to check for us and find out how many of these occurred in papers published in 2005.

(but it takes a while for libraries like SLAC/Stanford to register these numbers so we have to wait for a while to know the results, I don't know how much of an idea of 2005 one can get already---maybe not so much)

 

[Berislav]

Okay. Here are the citation numbers for this year by my count (as reported by SLAC):

KKTL- 133
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves - 73
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications - 96
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory - 70
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory - 57
Witten on strings on twistor space - 48

Can I change my vote to 6?

 

[marcus]

Peter Woit has offered a list of 6 recent (publ. 2001-2005) papers which he thinks might reach the 100 citations mark this year.
...

Here is his list:

KKLT http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0301240
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0202021
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0105097
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0308055
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0106048
Witten on strings on twistor space http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0312171

...

Since there is some interest, let's see how these papers are doing, and how they did last year.
I just checked for the Witten and I could find roughly 50 papers that might be published this year, which cited the Witten.
With a list of preprints (some of which never reach publication) it is not always easy to tell which are the ones that will be published in 2005, but I am just estimating. There were about 50 preprints that appeared since November 2004 that cited this Witten paper.

Probably we will not know the final number until the SLAC/Stanford people put out their 2005 "Topcites" listing sometime next year.

But we can go to SLAC library and see how these papers did last year. It will give some notion.

 

[marcus]

In 2004 there were 8 recent string papers that got 100+ citations,
the list is here
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/annual.shtml
and recent means the previous 5 years (2000 through 2004).

...please post your guess and I will keep track.

this Topcites list is what we are guessing about, but we only have it for 2004, not 2005.

However let's look on the 2004 list and see how the Witten paper, for example, did.

Hmmm, I see exactly 100 cites in 2004, and likewise that Kachru et al about Inflation. here is a quote from the list:

0100
Perturbative gauge theory as a string theory in twistor space
By Edward Witten (Princeton, Inst. Advanced Study).
Published in Commun.Math.Phys.252:189-258,2004


0100
Towards inflation in string theory
By Shamit Kachru (Stanford U., Phys. Dept. & SLAC), Renata Kallosh, Andrei Linde (Stanford U., Phys. Dept.), Juan Maldacena (Princeton, Inst. Advanced Study), Liam McAllister (Stanford U., Phys. Dept.), Sandip P. Trivedi (Tata Inst.).

the Douglas Nekrasov, that Peter Woit mentioned, got 135 cites. and the Giddings et al got 147. (again I quote)

0135
Noncommutative field theory
By Michael R. Douglas (Rutgers U., Piscataway & IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette), Nikita A. Nekrasov (IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette & Moscow, ITEP).

0147
Hierarchies from fluxes in string compactifications
By Steven B. Giddings (Santa Barbara, KITP & UC, Santa Barbara), Shamit Kachru (Santa Barbara, KITP & Stanford U., Phys. Dept. & SLAC), Joseph Polchinski (Santa Barbara, KITP).

I don't mean to suggest this is better than that or make any comparisons, I just want to illustrate what we are forecasting---recent papers that will be on the 2005 Topcite list with 100+ citations occurring in 2005.
One can see that if this year is at all like last year, several of these papers that Peter mentioned will be 100+

 

[marcus]

Okay. Here are the citation numbers for this year by my count (as reported by SLAC):

KKTL- 133
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves - 73
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications - 96
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory - 70
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory - 57
Witten on strings on twistor space - 48

Can I change my vote to 6?

Berislav, of course I will list you as guessing 6. I did not see this post until now. You have been quicker than I in finding these numbers. Are these preprints or published papers? I am curious how you got the numbers.
I was thinking just to wait until next year sometime.

[EDIT: I will reply to Berislav's post #27 here. thanks, now i see how you got the numbers.]

 

[marcus]

Now there are 11 people in the poll and our predictions are

How many recent string papers will get 100+ citations in 2005?

One better than last year, 9: Meteor
Same as last year, 8: Locrian and I
One less than last year, 7: Igor_S
Slump continues, 6: selfAdjoint, Berislav
Yikes! 5: Peter Woit, Ohwilleke, Chronos
5-ish: Gokul
More yikes! 4: Spin_Network

Berislav agrees with selfAdjoint, in predicting 6 papers. At first he estimated 7 but on clarification about the problem revised his guess to 6.

 

[Berislav]

Are these preprints or published papers? I am curious how you got the numbers.

I counted the number of preprints that were submitted this year which cite the paper in question on it's SLAC page, e.g. http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+EPRINT+HEP-TH/0301240

 

[marcus]

Hi Marcus,

Fun for the whole family!

I'm guessing 5-6 papers from 2001-2005 with >100 citations, and I'll even tell you which ones they'll be, roughly in order. I voted already and put 5 in my vote, but had forgotten about one. But leave my vote at 5, I think the last two on this list will be close to 100 citations and one of them may not make it.

KKLT hep-th/0301240
Berenstein et. al. on PP-waves hep-th/0202021
Giddings et. al on Flux compactifications hep-th/0105097
Kachru et. al. on inflation and string theory hep-th/0308055
Douglas, Nekrasov on Non-commutative field theory hep-th/0106048
Witten on strings on twistor space hep-th/0312171

Peter

The list that Berislav was checking out, in the preceding post, was one that notevenwrong supplied earlier in this thread. I first found out about Peter Woit's blog, Notevenwrong, in this thread started by selfAdjoint:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=16961

I had forgotten exactly when and which thread, but just now by accident came across the link to it. thanks to both. Its been extremely interesting to read Peter's blog (and sometimes some of the comments) over the past year.

Will be interesting to see how Peter's picks do citewise...

 

[selfAdjoint]

I first found out about Peter Woit's blog, Notevenwrong, in this thread started by selfAdjoint

BTW, do check out Woit's blogroll. I know you've seen "Cosmic Variance", but others like "Life on the Lattice" and "@matrix" are exciting too. And "It's the Same but It's Different", although much of it is in Brazilian Portugese, has every week a must-see cull of interesting papers from the arxiv.

This last week has been meetings for everybody - strings, lattices, gravity at SLAC (wanna T-shirt?), and et blowin' cetera. Many reports and sociological snippets.

 

[marcus]

BTW, do check out Woit's blogroll...

You're right! Peter's blogroll, especially in the old days before he put in the new format, was a real springboard for me. I found out about Steve Hsu's
"Information Processing" blog that way. Just to mention one.
But Peter pared the list down when he changed software. Everything is less cluttered now: easier to read and looks better. Still, it means that to get links to blogs I often have to go somewhere else, like Cosmic Variance
(whatever the site's other merits, the atmosphere there has a noticeably higher level of media-narcissism)

Something else was on my mind:

...

In 2000 there were 21 recent string papers that got 100+ citations.
The list is here
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/top40.2000.shtml
By recent, I mean published any time in the previous 5 years (1996 through 2000).

In 2004 there were 8 recent string papers that got 100+ citations,
the list is here
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/annual.shtml
and recent means the previous 5 years (2000 through 2004).

...

I've been puzzled by the fact that the usual stuff for 2004 has been slow to come out at
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/

I just know of these two pieces:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/annual.shtml

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/alltime.shtml

does anyone know of other parts of the 2004 topcites report that have been posted?

For instance, I have not seen Michael Peskin's review for last year

AFAIK the only thing to do is periodically check at this directory:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2004/

 

[marcus]

Robert Ihnot (welcome!) added his prediction. Time to update. Now there are 12 people in the poll and our predictions are

How many recent string papers will get 100+ citations in 2005?

One better than last year, 9: Meteor
Same as last year, 8: Locrian and I
One less than last year, 7: Igor_S
Slump continues, 6: selfAdjoint, Berislav, Robert Ihnot
Yikes! 5 or less: Peter Woit, Ohwilleke, Chronos, Gokul, Spin_Network


Berislav at first estimated 7 but on clarification of the problem revised his guess to 6. The way the distribution shapes up is

9: 1
8: 2
7: 1
6: 3
5 or less: 5