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A Concise Introduction to Bibliometrics & its History
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The origin of the term "Bibliometrics" The terms bibliometrics and scientometrics have been introduced almost simultaneously by Pritchard and by Nalimov and Mulchenko in 1969. While Pritchard explained the term bibliometrics as "the application of mathematical and statistical methods to books and other media of communication" (Pritchard, 1969), Nalimov and Mulchenko defined scientometrics as "the application of those quantitative methods which are dealing with the analysis of science viewed as an information process" (Nalimov and Mulchenko, 1969). According to these interpretations, scientometrics is restricted to the measurement of science communication, whereas bibliometrics is designed to deal with more general information processes. The anyhow fuzzy borderlines between the two specialities almost vanished during the last three decades, and nowadays both terms are used almost as synonyms. Instead, the field informetrics took the place of the originally broader speciality bibliometrics. The term informetrics was adopted by VINITI (Gorkova, 1988) and stands for a more general subfield of information science dealing with mathematical-statistical analysis of communication processes in science. In contrast to the original definition of bibliometrics, informetrics also deals with electronic media and thus includes topics such as the statistical analysis of the (scientific) text and hypertext systems, library circulations, information measures in electronic libraries, models for Information Production Processes and quantitative aspects of information retrieval as well. In his review entitled "Biblio-, sciento-, infor-metrics??? What are we talking about" Brookes (1990) gave an interesting overview about origin and contexts of these metrics of science, literature and information in general. The description given by Glänzel and Schoepflin in 1994 defines the scope of bibliometric research areas is much wider than the usual ones, and thus integrate all presently existing orientations such as applications to science policy, library science, and information retrieval. According to their approach, bibliometrics and informetrics include "all quantitative aspects and models of science communication, storage, dissemination and retrieval of scientific information". The definition by Gloria Carrizo-Sainero (2000) considers bibliometrics "the ensemble of methodological knowledge that will serve the application of quantitative techniques in order to evaluate the processes of production, communication and use of scientific information. Its goal is to contribute to the analysis and evaluation of science and research." This gives a clear orientation in direction toward research evaluation that has become the most important application of bibliometric research and technology. From the above-mentioned general description of the main task of the research field bibliometrics (scientometrics), the following statement becomes quite obvious. Bibliometrics can be used to develop and provide tools to be applied to research evaluation but is not designed to evaluate research results. Moreover, bibliometrics does not aim at replacing qualitative methods by quantitative approaches and bibliometrics is not designed to override or even to substitute peer reviews or evaluation by experts but qualitative and quantitative methods in science studies should complement each other.
History of bibliometrics - a concise review The origins of statistical studies on scientific bibliographies can be traced back to the twenties of the last century (see, e.g. Hulme, 1923). In 1926, Alfred J. Lotka published his pioneering study on the frequency distribution of scientific productivity (Lotka, 1926). At almost the same time, in 1927, Gross and Gross published their citation-based study in order to aid the decision which chemistry periodicals should best purchased by small college libraries. In particular, they examined 3633 citations from the 1926 volume of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. This study is considered the first citation analysis, although it is not a citation analysis in the sense of present-day bibliometrics. Eight years after Lotka's article appeared, Bradford
(1934) published his study on the frequency distribution of
papers over journals. He established a relationship concerning
the frequency distribution of papers over journals In particular,
he found that "if scientific journals are arranged in order of
decreasing productivity on a given subject, they may be divided
into a nucleus of journals more particularly devoted to the subject
and several groups or zones containing the same number of articles
as the nucleus when the numbers of periodicals in the nucleus
and the succeeding zones will be as These early attempts remained, however, unnoticed until the early 60s. The causes for this phenomenon are twofold. These papers appeared when traditional methods of information retrieval were still sufficient, and financing systems for scientific research did not yet stand need of quantitative or even sophisticated statistical methods. The situation dramatically changed when Derek John de Solla Price published his books entitled "Science since Babylon" (Price, 1961) and "Little Science - Big Science" (Price, 1963). It was especially due to him that questions dealing with quantitative aspects of research became the target of interest of scientists and of research managers. He was also one of the main propagators of using the Science Citation Index® (SCI) database of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, Philadelphia, PA, USA) as a tool in quantitative analysis of science. He analysed the recent system of science communication, and thus he presented the first systematic approach to the structure of modern science applied to the science as a whole. At the same time he laid the foundation of modern research evaluation techniques. "Little Science - Big Science" had a great impact and severe consequences. The need for the evaluation of productivity and effectiveness of scientific research became imperative and time was now ripe for reception of his ideas since globalisation of science communication, the growth of knowledge and published results, increasing specialisation as well as growing importance of interdisciplinarity in scientific research reached a stage where scientific information retrieval began to fail and funding systems based on personal knowledge and evaluations by peer reviews became more and more difficult. The sharp rise which bibliometrics took since the late sixties is reflected by remarkable academic activities, and is intimately connected with the advanced information technology, with the development in computer science and technology and, especially, with the worldwide availability of the large bibliographic databases serving as the ground work of bibliometric research. Especially the databases of the ISI should be mentioned in this context. The SCI and more recently the Web of Science have become the most generally accepted basic source for bibliometric analysis. However, in the seventies, when data collection was often still a matter of manual work, the field bibliometrics was, characterised by the personalities of enthusiastic researchers, much in the way of a "hobby" to later integrate interdisciplinary approaches as well as mathematical and physical models on one side, and sociological and psychological methods on the other, not speaking of the long tradition of library science. Later on, since the beginning of the eighties, bibliometrics could evolve into a distinct scientific discipline with a specific research profile, several subfields and the corresponding scientific communication structures. Major steps towards the institutionalisation of the field were, in 1978, the launching of the journal Scientometrics as the first periodical specialised on bibliometric/scientometric topics, international conferences since 1983 and the journal Research Evaluation since 1991). The publication of several comprehensive books on bibliometrics, among others by Haitun (1983), Ravichandra Rao (1983), Bujdosó (1986), van Raan (1988), Egghe and Rousseau (1990), and Courtial (1990), may reflect this process. The fact that bibliometric methods are already applied to the field bibliometrics itself also indicates the rapid development of the discipline. Imitating the transition from the "manufactural" form of "little science" to the "big science" of multinational research centres and enormous governmental and industrial supports, scientometrics itself is claimed to change from its "little" form to a "big" one with huge computerised databases and with national and multinational research policy agencies as major customers. In the 90s, bibliometrics has become a standard tool of science policy and research management. In particular, all significant compilations of science indicators heavily rely on publication and citation statistics and other, more sophisticated bibliometric techniques. Present-day bibliometric research is aimed at the following three main target-groups that clearly determine topics and sub-areas of "contemporary bibliometrics".
Bibliometrics - as a truly interdisciplinary field - has strong links with related research fields and fields of applications and services. Bibliometrics is traditionally strongly related with library science, information retrieval and sociology of science, on the other hand, results of bibliomertric research and technology are applied as services for librarianship, scientific information and science policy.
References BROOKES, B.C., Biblio-, sciento-, infor-metrics??? What are we talking about, In: L. Egghe, R. Rousseau (Eds.), Informetrics 89/90, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 1990, 31-43. BUJDOSÓ, E., Bibliometrics and Scientometrics, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár Könyvtártudományi és Módszertani Központ - MTA Könyvtára, Budapest, 1986 (in Hungarian). CARRIZO SAINERO, G., Toward a Concept of Bibliometrics, Journal of Spanish Research on Information Science, 1 (2), 2000, 5986. COURTIAL, J.P., Introduction ŕ la scientometrie, Anthropos, Paris, 1990. EGGHE, L., ROUSSEAU, R., Introduction to Informetrics. Quantitative Methods in Library, Documentation and Information Science, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1990. GLÄNZEL, W., SCHOEPFLIN, U., Little Scientometrics - Big Scientometrics ... and Beyond, Scientometrics, 30 (2-3), 1994, 375-384. GORKOVA, V.I., Informetrics, Informatics, 10, VINITI, Moscow, 1988. GROSS, P.L.K., GROSS, E.M., College Libraries and Chemical Education, Science, 66, 1927, 385?389. HAITUN S.D., Scientometrics: State and Perspectives, Nauka, Moscow, 1983 (in Russian). HULME, E.W., Statistical Bibliography in Relation to the Growth of Modern Civilization, Grafton, London, 1923. LOTKA, A.J., The Frequency Distribution of Scientific Productivity, J. Washington Acad. Sci., 16, 1926, 317?323. NALIMOV, V.V., MULCHENKO, B.M., Scientometrics, Nauka, Moscow, 1969 (in Russian). PRICE, D. DE SOLLA, Science since Babylon, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1961. PRICE, D. DE SOLLA, Little Science, Big Science, Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 1963. PRITCHARD, A., Statistical bibliography or bibliometrics? Journal of Documentation 24, 1969, 348?349. RAVICHANDRA RAO, I. K., Quantitative Methods for Library and Information Science. Wiley-Eastern. New Delhi, 1983. VAN RAAN, A.F.J. (Ed.), Handbook of Quantitative Studies of Science and Technology, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1988. |
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