“Stochastic Modeling of Citation Slips”, 2004-01-27 (; backlinks; similar):
We present empirical data on frequency and pattern of misprints in citations to twelve high-profile papers.
We find that the distribution of misprints, ranked by frequency of their repetition, follows Zipf’s law.
We propose a stochastic model of citation process, which explains these findings, and leads to the conclusion that 70–90% of scientific citations are copied from the lists of references used in other papers.