[R] Lag state in citation graphs: a systematic indexing blind spot with implications for lit review automation

About this article

Something kept showing up in our citation graph analysis that didn't have a name: papers actively referenced in recently published work but whose references haven't propagated into the major indices yet. We're calling it the lag state — it's a structural feature of the graph, not just a data quality issue. The practical implication: if you're building automated literature review pipelines on Semantic Scholar or similar, you're working with a surface that has systematic holes — and those holes...