Obliteration phenomenon

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The Obliteration Phenomenon is a concept in library and information science, referring to the tendency for truly ground-breaking research papers to fail to be cited after the ideas they put forward are fully accepted into the orthodox world view. For example, Albert Einstein's paper on the theory of relativity is rarely cited in modern research papers on physical cosmology, despite its direct relevance.

The term was first coined in 1968 by Robert K. Merton, and is one of many problems in citation analysis. Its first usage can be seen in Merton's book, On the Shoulders of Giants.