Bibliometric laws
BIBLIOMETRIC LAWS
Bibliometrics is a type of research method used in library and information science. It utilizes quantitative analysis and statistics to describe patterns of publication within a given field or body of literature. Researchers may use bibliometric methods of evaluation to determine the influence of a single writer, for example, or to describe the relationship between two or more writers or works. One common way of conducting bibliometric research is to use the Social Science Citation Index, the Science Citation Index or the Arts and Humanities Citation Index to trace citations.
Laws of bibliometrics
One of the main areas in bibliometrics research concerns the application of bibliometrics laws. The three most commonly used laws in bibliometrics are: Lotka’s law of scientific productivity, Bradford’s law of scatter, and Zipf’s law of word occurrence.
Zipf’s law
Zipf’s law is often used to predict the frequency of words within a text. The Law states that in a relatively lengthy text, if you “list the words occurring within that text in order of decreasing frequency, the rank of a word on that list multiplied by its frequency will equal a constant. The equation for this relationship is: r×f = k where r is the rank of the word, f is the frequency, and k is the constant (Potter 1988).
Application
Zipf illustrated his law with an analysis of James Joyce’s Ulysses.” He showed that the tenth most frequent word occurred 2,653 times, the hundredth most frequent word occurred 265 times, and the two hundredth word occurred 133 times, and so on. Zipf found then that the rank of the word multiplied by the frequency of the word equals a constant that is approximately 26, 500” (Potter 1988). Zipf”s law again, is not statistically perfect but is very useful for indexers.
Lotka’s law
Alfred J. Lotka published in 1926 an investigation of the statistical distribution of the productivity of authors based on Chemical Abstracts. He found an approximate
Bibliometrics is a type of research method used in library and information science. It utilizes quantitative analysis and statistics to describe patterns of publication within a given field or body of literature. Researchers may use bibliometric methods of evaluation to determine the influence of a single writer, for example, or to describe the relationship between two or more writers or works. One common way of conducting bibliometric research is to use the Social Science Citation Index, the Science Citation Index or the Arts and Humanities Citation Index to trace citations.
Laws of bibliometrics
One of the main areas in bibliometrics research concerns the application of bibliometrics laws. The three most commonly used laws in bibliometrics are: Lotka’s law of scientific productivity, Bradford’s law of scatter, and Zipf’s law of word occurrence.
Zipf’s law
Zipf’s law is often used to predict the frequency of words within a text. The Law states that in a relatively lengthy text, if you “list the words occurring within that text in order of decreasing frequency, the rank of a word on that list multiplied by its frequency will equal a constant. The equation for this relationship is: r×f = k where r is the rank of the word, f is the frequency, and k is the constant (Potter 1988).
Application
Zipf illustrated his law with an analysis of James Joyce’s Ulysses.” He showed that the tenth most frequent word occurred 2,653 times, the hundredth most frequent word occurred 265 times, and the two hundredth word occurred 133 times, and so on. Zipf found then that the rank of the word multiplied by the frequency of the word equals a constant that is approximately 26, 500” (Potter 1988). Zipf”s law again, is not statistically perfect but is very useful for indexers.
Lotka’s law
Alfred J. Lotka published in 1926 an investigation of the statistical distribution of the productivity of authors based on Chemical Abstracts. He found an approximate
References: Basu, A. (1980). Theoretical foundation of Bradford’s law. International forum for Information and Documentation, 5(1), 15-22. Bensman, S.J. & Wilder, S. J. (1998). Scientific and Technical Serials Holding Optimization in a Inefficient market: A LSU Serials Redesign Project exercise. Library Resources and Technical Services, 42(3), 147-242. Bradford S. C. (1948). Documentation. London: Crosby Lockwood. Brookes, B. C. (1969a). Bradford’s law and the bibliography science. Nature, 224(5223), 953-956. Lotka’s Alfred J. (1926).’The frequency distribution of Scientific productivity’. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 16(12): 317-324.