ABS: Kawamura, Lotka's law and the pattern of scientific productivity in the dental science literature

[Gretchen Whitney]

AU Kawamura, M
   Thomas, CDL
   Kawaguchi, Y
   Sasahara, H
TI Lotka's law and the pattern of scientific productivity in the
   dental science literature
SO MEDICAL INFORMATICS AND THE INTERNET IN MEDICINE
NR 8
C1 Hiroshima Univ, Sch Dent, Hiroshima 730, Japan.
   Hiroshima Univ, Sch Dent, Hiroshima 730, Japan.
   Univ Melbourne, Sch Dent Sci, Parkville, Vic 3052, Australia.
   Tokyo Med & Dent Univ, Fac Dent, Tokyo, Japan.
DE Lotka's law; scientific productivity; dental science
   literature; Medline
AB Statistical regularities can be observed in many natural and
   social phenomena. From empirical data on the authorship of
   scientific papers, Lotka deduced an inverse-square law: the
   number of authors publishing n papers is 1/n(2) of those
   publishing one paper. The general type for the relation
   (1/n(c)) has a wide range of applicability to a variety of
   phenomena. This study examined, by means of bibliometric tools,
   whether Lotka's law could be applied to the literature of
   dental science. Data came from 20 leading dental science
   journals, as reported in Journal Citation Reports. The search
   was performed with a programme developed using Visual Basic for
   Applications, which counted the number of authors and analysed
   their contributions to the literature. Authorship for all
   contributions, as reported in Medline, was compiled for each of
   these 20 journals for the last 25 years, 1971 through 1995. The
   total number of authors was 43 796, responsible for 124 556
   authorships. The journals published in countries other than the
   USA exhibited higher degrees of author concentration. The
   dental science literature conformed very well to Lotka's model
   with c = 1.95.
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BP 309
EP 315
PG 7
JI Med. Inform. Internet Med.
PY 1999
PD OCT-DEC
VL 24
IS 4
GA 276LM
RP Kawamura M
   Hiroshima Univ, Sch Dent, Hiroshima 730, Japan.
J9 MED INFORM INTERNET MED
UT ISI:000084879300007
ER

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