On the origins of bibliometrics

Benoît Godin

Scientometrics, 2006, vol. 68, issue 1, No 6, 109-133

Abstract: Summary Among the many statistics on science, called scientometrics, bibliometrics holds a privileged place. Bibliometrics is one of the few subfields concerned with measuring the output side of science. According to most “histories”, bibliometrics owes its systematic development mainly to D.J.D. Price and Eugene Garfield, as founders. The few works conducted before the 1950s are usually relegated to prehistory. This paper documents how the systematic counting of publications originated with psychologists. In the early 1900s, psychologists began collecting statistics on their discipline. Publications came to be counted in addresses, reviews and histories of psychology for several decades. The aim was to contribute to the advancement of psychology. Far from being a negligible output of a prehistoric type, both the volume and the systematicness of these efforts are witnesses to what should be considered as pioneering work, and their authors considered as forerunners to bibliometrics.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-006-0086-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:68:y:2006:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-006-0086-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-006-0086-0

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().