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Abstract  

The paper proposes a classification scheme for the roles of citations in empirical studies from the social sciences and related fields. The use of the classification, which has eight categories, is illustrated in sociology, education, demography, epidemiology and librarianship; its association with the citations' location within the paper is presented. The question of repeated citations of the same document is discussed. Several research questions to which this classification is relevant are proposed. The need for further critique, validation and experimentation is pointed out.

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Abstract  

The assumption underlying citation analysis is that the citing authors select their references in a rational manner. The present study, based on a very homogeneous collection of clinical trials from a meta-analysis, provides a partial verification of this idea: citing authors prefer large studies to smaller ones, they also seem to prefer studies representing the minority view of the research issue, perhaps in order to make their presentation more balanced. On the other hand, in this instance the inclusion of a placebo in the study design does not affect citation frequency. Furthermore, the conjecture that heuristic value is a main determinant of citability is not settled.

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Abstract  

Letters to the editor published in theLancet during the first half of 1980 were less cited than the corresponding papers. The average number of citations per letter was larger if the letter contained some substantive information. The longer the letter the more frequently it was cited. Letters that react to some previous publication tend to be shorter than spontaneous letters. Reacting letters tend to be less cited than spontaneous letters if they are short, more cited if they are longer. Letters with substantive information tend to originate outside the UK in which case they are also more cited.

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Abstract  

The fit of Bradford's Law to bibliometrics — a field which is both interdisciplinary and relatively new was investigated. It is found that, contrary to expectations, the data fit Bradford's Law very well, particularly in the more recent period, 1979–1983. There are, in both periods studied, seven core journals with about 30% of the papers; most of these journals are specialized in information science or documentation. No falling away from Bradford's distribution towards the right-hand end of the bibliography was observed.

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Abstract  

Is research which receives grant support more cited than unfunded research? The answer to this question for the field of economics is — at least tentatively — affirmative. However, in pursuing this query several methodological questions are encountered and discussed, ranging from the choice of the statistical model and of the population, through the control of covariates, to the selection of the unit of investigation. It is suggested that, in spite of their limitations, small bibliometric studies of selected populations, which control for at least some of the relevant covariates, might become a helpful tool in clarifying some issues in science policy.

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Abstract  

The World Wide Web is growing at an enormous speed, and has become an indispensable source for information and research. New pages are constantly added, but there are additional processes as well: pages are moved or removed and/or their content changes. We report here the results of an eight year long project started in 1998, when multiple search engines were used to identify a set of pages containing the term informetrics. Data collection was repeated once a year for the last eight years (with the exception of 2000 and 2001) using both search engines and revisiting previously identified pages. The results show that the number of pages grew from 866 in 1998 to 28,914 in 2006 — a 33-fold growth. Besides the obvious growth of the topic on the Web, we observed both decay (pages disappearing from the Web) and modification. Even though most of the pages from 1998 either disappeared or ceased to contain the term informetrics, 165 pages (19.1%) still exist in 2006 and contain the search term. We followed the “fate” of these 165 pages: characterized the publishers, the contents and the changes that occurred the whole period. In recent years e-print servers and publishers’ sites became sources of large number of pages related to informetrics. Longitudinal studies following the evolution of a topic on the Web are very important, since they provide insights about content and the underlying Web processes.

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Abstract  

The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which the field of bibliometrics and scientometrics makes use of sources outside the field. The research was carried out by examining the references of articles published in Scientometrics in the course of two calendar years, 1990, 2000. The results show that in 2000, 56.9% (and 47.3% in 1990) of the references originated from three fields: scientometrics and bibliometrics; library and information science; and the sociology, history and philosophy of science. When comparing the two periods, there is also a considerable increase in journal self-citation (i.e., references to the journal Scientometrics) and in the percentage of references to journals.

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The life span of a specific topic on the web

The case of “informetrics”: A quantitative analysis

Scientometrics
Authors:
Judit Bar-Ilan
and
Bluma Peritz

Abstract  

In this case study a first attempt was made to explore data on the Web for a certain period of time by using bibliometric methods for analysis. The period under investigation was between January 3, 1998 and June 7, 1998. An additional search was carried out on June 20, 1999. The terms used were “informetrics or, informetric”. The results show that substantial changes occurred to the “literature on the Web” on informetrics during this period. Three specific trends were observed: some documents disppeared, new ones were added and some underwent changes.

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