The
evolution of the misprint distribution is described by the following rate equations (NK is the number of misprints that appeared K times; N is the total number of citations):
It’s
stationary solution is: with
Zipf
law exponent:
The
rate equation for the total number of misprints is:
The solution
is: Given that
we get:
Misprint propagation model
A typical outcome of a numerical simulation of the misprint propagation model ( R=0.2 )
compared with the actual
misprint data.
Each new citer finds the reference to the original in
any of the papers that already cite it. With probability R he reads the original. With probability 1-R he copies the citation from the paper he found the citation in. In any case, with
probability M he introduces a new misprint.
