Long Tail Science

Taking a page out of Chris Andersons book, I am sure that this applies to science aswell:

It seems obvious in hindsight. As most of the long tail metaphor does. The interesting thing is what you can do with it, once you have really understood the concept. I suppose you can plot the impact factor of science journals and get such a curve.

[Update]: people have looked into this. This June, Nature had a short story on exactly this topic (Nature 435, 1003-1004 (23 June 2005)):

These figures all reflect just how strongly the impact factor is influenced by a small minority of papers — no doubt to a lesser extent in more specialized journals, but significantly nevertheless. However, we are just as satisfied with the value of our papers in the ‘long tail’ as with that of the more highly cited work.

The citation rate of our papers also varies sharply between disciplines. Many of Nature’s papers in immunology published in 2003 have since received between 50 and 200 citations. Significant proportions of those in cancer and molecular and cell biology have been in the 50−150 range. But papers in physics, palaeontology and climatology typically achieved fewer than 50 citations. Clearly, these reflect differences in disciplinary dynamics, not in quality.

It would be interesting to see the disciplines aligned according citations.