AUTHOR=Kim Yeseul , Weon Byung Mook TITLE=Stretched Exponential Dynamics in Online Article Views JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics VOLUME=8 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.619729 DOI=10.3389/fphy.2020.619729 ISSN=2296-424X ABSTRACT=

Article view statistics offers a measure to quantify scientific and public impact of online published articles. Popularity of a paper in online community changes with time. To understand popularity dynamics of article views, we propose a decay dynamics based on a stretched exponential model. We find that a stretched exponent gradually decreases with time after online publication following a power-law scaling. Compared with a simple exponential or biexponential model, a stretched exponential model with a time-dependent exponent well describes long-tailed popularity dynamics of online articles. This result gives a useful insight into how popularity diminishes with time in online community.