Discussion?

[charles h. davis]

Point taken, however patronizing it may have been to Gene Garfield, to
whom we're all indebted.

Having said that, there is much new to be learned.  I call your attention
to the following website:

        http://www.slis.indiana.edu/

Take a look at "Webometrics and Influmetrics."

While one may deplore the neologisms, s/he might also learn something.  In
addition to the usual citation-analyses, people should take seriously the
examination of acknowledgements -- a related but different kind of
intellectual indebtedness.

I am particularly interested as I believe the behavior follows a power
curve rather than a simple exponential "law."  (Note that I put "law" in
parentheses since it merely exemplifies a pattern.)

Before she passed away, Jean Tague expressed interest in some work that
Blaise Cronin and I had done:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Davis, Charles H. and Blaise Cronin, "Acknowledgments and
Intellectual Indebtedness: A Bibliometric Conjecture," Journal of the
American Society for Information Science 44(10):590-592 (December 1993)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
===============================================================
Charles H. Davis, Ph.D.       |     Professor Emeritus
Senior Fellow                 |     GSLIS
Indiana University            |     University of Illinois
Bloomington, IN 47405         |     Urbana-Champaign
(812) 331-1322                |
Fax: (812) 855-6166           |
http://memex.lib.indiana.edu/davisc/davisc.html
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