Quantifying citation inflation: measurement methods and their implications for research evaluation

With the exponential growth of scientific literature and changing citation behavior among scholars, citation inflation has become an increasingly important issue in research evaluation. In this study, we propose a new citation deflator based on reference growth rate (CDR) instead of using the publication rate as a citation deflator (CDP). Our comparative analysis of the two deflators shows that failing to deflate citation counts leads to significant underestimation of the scientific impact of prior generations. Moreover, CDP overemphasizes the value of early citations and underestimates the value of recent citations, resulting in over-amplification of early citations. Therefore, we suggest a systemic overhaul of citation counting methods and the creation of a citation deflator to mitigate inflationary temporal bias.