Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS): Origins and Applications of a Research Program [2014-2018]

After the invention of Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) by Werner Marx in 2010, LL was invited to join this team in several studies. LL reproduced RPYS for personal usage as rpys.exe at http://www.leydesdorff.net/software/rpys. This version is analytical—less oriented towards the embellishment of the graphical interface—and allows the user to generate a spectrogram in Excel. JC suggested to extend the routine with a graphical interface. This led to a series of programmatic steps during the years 2015-2018 which are summarized. The software is freely available at http://www.leydesdorff.net/comins