So I have the following question assuming I start with N academic papers, though I was thinking to make this simple I start with one academic paper. And say it has C citations, and each one of these C citations, has their own D citations. Is there a way I could estimate when there would be a convergence of the number of citations. Basically when I would end up reading citations that I had already read? (So basically D would be one of the N papers)
(The inspiration for this question is because I have to do a literature review in Bioengienering, and I was wondering, what depth I should go to to read relevant papers, that are cited by a relevant paper, that is sufficient to have done an in depth analysis of my sub field)