Gini coefficient of scientists and universities
Abstract
Using the public database of Google Scholar article citations of scientists and universities we apply the algorithm for constructing Lorenz curves to the resulting citation distributions. Using Lorenz and Pareto curves, broadly used for economic analyses of wealth inequality across countries, we show that this approach gives a useful insight of citation distributions of world-leading scientists characterized by the Gini coefficient G obtained from the Lorenz curves. For articles of 15 Nobel laureates (including A. Einstein and R. Feynman) we find the average G=0.81 with 50% of articles capturing only 2.7% of all citations and the top 10% (1%) of articles capturing 71% (30%) of all citations. Furthmore, we determine for world-leading universities the Gini coefficient via the citations of affiliated scientists. We show that about 65 percent of all citations belonging to a university (e.g. Princeton, Cambridge) are generated only by 10 percent of their university scientists while 50% of scientists produce only 3% of all university citations. The citation distributions are well described by the concept of Rayleigh-Jeans thermalization and condensation with similarities traced to the world wealth inequality.
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BibTeX
@misc{frahm2026gini,
title = {{Gini coefficient of scientists and universities}},
author = {Klaus M. Frahm and Dima L. Shepelyansky},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.26053},
eprint = {2610.26053},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.26053},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Gini coefficient of scientists and universities
AU - Klaus M. Frahm
AU - Dima L. Shepelyansky
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/19
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.26053
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.26053
AB - Using the public database of Google Scholar article citations of scientists and universities we apply the algorithm for constructing Lorenz curves to the resulting citation distributions. Using Lorenz and Pareto curves, broadly used for economic analyses of wealth inequality across countries, we show that this approach gives a useful insight of citation distributions of world-leading scientists characterized by the Gini coefficient G obtained from the Lorenz curves. For articles of 15 Nobel laureates (including A. Einstein and R. Feynman) we find the average G=0.81 with 50% of articles capturing only 2.7% of all citations and the top 10% (1%) of articles capturing 71% (30%) of all citations. Furthmore, we determine for world-leading universities the Gini coefficient via the citations of affiliated scientists. We show that about 65 percent of all citations belonging to a university (e.g. Princeton, Cambridge) are generated only by 10 percent of their university scientists while 50% of scientists produce only 3% of all university citations. The citation distributions are well described by the concept of Rayleigh-Jeans thermalization and condensation with similarities traced to the world wealth inequality.
ER -