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Author inflation leads to a breakdown of Lotka's law

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  • Hildrun Kretschmer
  • Ronald Rousseau

Abstract

It is empirically shown that, even using the normal or total counting procedure, Lotka's law breaks down when articles with a large, i.e., more than hundred, number of authors are included in the bibliography. The explanation of this phenomenon is that the conditions for an application of the basic success‐breeds‐success model are not fulfilled any more. Studying articles with many authors means dealing with items (the articles) having multiple sources (the authors), hence Egghe's generalized success‐breeds‐success model, leading to not necessarily decreasing distributions, explains the observed irregularities.

Suggested Citation

  • Hildrun Kretschmer & Ronald Rousseau, 2001. "Author inflation leads to a breakdown of Lotka's law," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 52(8), pages 610-614.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:52:y:2001:i:8:p:610-614
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.1118
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    Cited by:

    1. Avick Kumar Dey & Pijush Kanti Dutta Pramanik & Prasenjit Choudhury & Goutam Bandopadhyay, 2021. "Distinctive author ranking using DEA indexing," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 601-620, April.
    2. Hassan Bougrine, 2014. "Subfield effects on the core of coauthors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1047-1064, February.
    3. Mason Youngblood & David Lahti, 2018. "A bibliometric analysis of the interdisciplinary field of cultural evolution," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-9, December.
    4. Sangwal, Keshra, 2013. "Comparison of different mathematical functions for the analysis of citation distribution of papers of individual authors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 36-49.
    5. Marija Petek, 2008. "Personal name headings in COBIB: Testing Lotka’s Law," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 75(1), pages 175-188, April.
    6. Mihail Cocosila & Alexander Serenko & Ofir Turel, 2011. "Exploring the management information systems discipline: a scientometric study of ICIS, PACIS and ASAC," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 1-16, April.
    7. Miśkiewicz, Janusz, 2013. "Effects of publications in proceedings on the measure of the core size of coauthors," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(20), pages 5119-5131.
    8. Sangwal, Keshra, 2014. "Distributions of citations of papers of individual authors publishing in different scientific disciplines: Application of Langmuir-type function," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 972-984.
    9. M. Ausloos, 2013. "A scientometrics law about co-authors and their ranking: the co-author core," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(3), pages 895-909, June.
    10. Liming Liang & Junwan Liu & Ronald Rousseau, 2004. "Name order patterns of graduate candidates and supervisors in Chinese publications: A case study of three major Chinese universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 61(1), pages 3-18, September.
    11. Liu, Yuxian & Rousseau, Ronald & Guns, Raf, 2013. "A layered framework to study collaboration as a form of knowledge sharing and diffusion," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 651-664.

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