βRead Before You Cite!β, 2002-12-03 (; backlinks; similar)β :
We report a method of estimating what percentage of people who cited a paper had actually read it.
The method is based on a stochastic modeling of the citation process that explains empirical studies of misprint distributions in citations (which we show follows a Zipf law).
Our estimate is only about 20% of citers read the original.