Burrell, QL (Burrell, Quentin L.) Some comments on "The estimation of lost multi-copy documents: A new type of informetrics theory" by Egghe and Proot JOURNAL OF INFORMETRICS, 2 (1): 101-105 2008

[Eugene Garfield]

E-mail Address: q.burrell at ibs.ac.im

Author(s): Burrell, QL (Burrell, Quentin L.) 

Title: Some comments on "The estimation of lost multi-copy documents: A 
new type of informetrics theory" by Egghe and Proot 

Source: JOURNAL OF INFORMETRICS, 2 (1): 101-105 2008 

Language: English 

Document Type: Article 

Author Keywords: multi-copy documents; truncated Poisson distribution; 
maximum likelihood; unseen species problem 

Keywords Plus: NUMBER; SAMPLE; POPULATION 

Abstract: Egghe and Proot [Egghe, L., & Proot, G. (2007). The estimation 
of the number of lost multi-copy documents: A new type of informetrics 
theory. Journal of Informetrics] introduce a simple probabilistic model to 
estimate the number of lost multi-copy documents based on the numbers of 
retrieved ones. We show that their model in practice can essentially be 
described by the well-known Poisson approximation to the binomial. This 
enables us to adopt a traditional maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) 
approach which allows the construction of (approximate) confidence 
intervals for the parameters of interest, thereby resolving an open 
problem left by the authors. We further show that the general estimation 
problem is a variant of a well-known unseen species problem. This work 
should be viewed as supplementing that of Egghe and Proot [Egghe, L., & 
Proot, G. (2007). The estimation of the number of lost multi-copy 
documents: A new type of informetrics theory. Journal of Informetrics]. It 
turns out that their results are broadly in line with those produced by 
this rather more robust statistical analysis. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All 
rights reserved. 

Addresses: Isle Man Int Business Sch, Douglas IM2 1QB, Man, England 

Reprint Address: Burrell, QL, Isle Man Int Business Sch, Old Castletown 
Rd, Douglas IM2 1QB, Man, England. 

E-mail Address: q.burrell at ibs.ac.im 

Cited Reference Count: 16 

Times Cited: 0 

Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV 

Publisher Address: PO BOX 211, 1000 AE AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS 

ISSN: 1751-1577 

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