Lotka and information science

Henry Voos

Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 1974, vol. 25, issue 4, 270-272

Abstract: Productivity in terms of scientific publication was described by Lotka in 1926. He discovered that in the hard sciences he could predict the number of papers an author would write providing he knew how many authors wrote only one paper during a given time period. The factor for predicting the number of papers in a field like chemistry was found to be 1/n2 of the number of authors writing only one paper. That is, if 100 authors wrote one paper, only 25 would write two papers, and only 11 would write three papers, etc. If the Lotka constant holds for the hard sciences it was hypothesized (and tested) that other disciplines would have other constants, and thereby form a continuum based on productivity from the hard sciences to the non‐sciences. The literature of information science has been examined between 1966 and 1970. It was determined that a new constant, 1/n3.5 fitted information science best.

Date: 1974
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