New book by Nicola de Bellis "Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis" from Scarecrow Press

[Eugene Garfield]

Subscribers to this listserv will want to read this magnificent work by
a scholar with an incredible knowledge of the history of our field. I
first heard about it when it was published in Italian and suggested the
author make it available in English translation. He went beyond that
suggestion and completely revised it and produced an excellent index. I
rarely make predictions but expect this work will become a classic.
Eugene Garfield

 

Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis: From the Science Citation Index to
Cybermetrics 
Nicola De Bellis 

 

 Can the methods of science be directed toward science itself? How did
it happen that scientists, scientific documents, and their bibliographic
links came to be regarded as mathematical variables in abstract models
of scientific communication? What is the role of quantitative analyses
of scientific and technical documentation in current science policy and
management? Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis: From the Science
Citation Index to Cybermetrics answers these questions through a
comprehensive overview of theories, techniques, concepts, and
applications in the interdisciplinary and steadily growing field of
bibliometrics.

Since citation indexes came into the limelight during the mid-1960s,
citation networks have become increasingly important for many different
research fields. The book begins by investigating the empirical,
philosophical, and mathematical foundations of bibliometrics, including
its beginnings with the Science Citation Index, the theoretical
framework behind it, and its mathematical underpinnings. It then
examines the application of bibliometrics and citation analysis in the
sciences and science studies, especially the sociology of science and
science policy. Finally it provides a view of the future of
bibliometrics, exploring in detail the ongoing extension of bibliometric
methods to the structure and dynamics of the World Wide Web. 

This book gives newcomers to the field of bibliometrics an accessible
entry point to an entire research tradition otherwise scattered through
a vast amount of journal literature. At the same time, it brings to the
forefront the cross-disciplinary linkages between the various fields
(sociology, philosophy, mathematics, politics) that intersect at the
crossroads of citation analysis. Because of its discursive and
interdisciplinary approach, the book is useful to those in every area of
scholarship involved in the quantitative analysis of information
exchanges, but also to science historians and general readers who simply
wish to familiarize themselves with an important, albeit increasingly
complex area of information science.

Nicola De Bellis is a medical librarian at the University of Modena and
Reggio Emilia.

 

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

$55.00 * 

Paper *

0-8108-6713-3 | 978-0-8108-6713-0 *

March 2009

* 450 pp

 

 

 

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