IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v88y2011i2d10.1007_s11192-011-0393-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Galton 2011 revisited: a bibliometric journey in the footprints of a universal genius

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Gorraiz

    (University of Vienna, Vienna University Library)

  • Christian Gumpenberger

    (University of Vienna, Vienna University Library)

  • Martin Wieland

    (University of Vienna, Vienna University Library)

Abstract

Commemorating the 100th death anniversary of Francis Galton, this paper is a bibliometric impact analysis of the works of this outstanding scientist and predecessor of scientometrics. Citation analysis was done in Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar (Publish or Perish) in order to retrieve the most cited books and journal articles. Additionally references were identified where Galton was rather mentioned than cited in order to analyze the phenomenon of obliteration by incorporation. Finally occurrence counts of Galton’s works in obituaries, Festschrift, the website Galton.org, major encyclopaedias and biographical indexes were compared to citation counts. As an outcome Galton’s works are increasingly cited or mentioned. Obliteration (use of eponyms) applies to one-third of Galton’s works and seems to be typical for fields like mathematics or statistics, whereas citations are more common in psychology. The most cited books and journal articles are also the most mentioned with remarkable correlation. Overall citation analysis and occurrence counting are complementary useful methods for the impact analysis of the works of “giants”.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Gorraiz & Christian Gumpenberger & Martin Wieland, 2011. "Galton 2011 revisited: a bibliometric journey in the footprints of a universal genius," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 627-652, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:88:y:2011:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0393-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0393-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-011-0393-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-011-0393-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valderrama-Zurian, J.C. & Melero-Fuentes, D. & Aleixandre-Benavent, R., 2019. "Origin, characteristics, predominance and conceptual networks of eponyms in the bibliometric literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 434-448.
    2. Martin Wieland & Juan Gorraiz, 2020. "The rivalry between Bernini and Borromini from a scientometric perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1643-1663, November.
    3. Luz M. Romo-Fernández & Vicente P. Guerrero-Bote & Félix Moya-Anegón, 2013. "Co-word based thematic analysis of renewable energy (1990–2010)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(3), pages 743-765, December.
    4. Katherine W. McCain, 2012. "Assessing Obliteration by Incorporation: Issues and Caveats," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(11), pages 2129-2139, November.
    5. Samuel Bjork & Avner Offer & Gabriel Söderberg, 2014. "Time series citation data: the Nobel Prize in economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 185-196, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:88:y:2011:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0393-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.