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Scientometrics, Vol. 12. Nos 5-6 (1987) 373-379 TOWARD A DEFINITION OF "BIBLIOMETRICS" R. N, BROADUS School of Library Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Manning Hall 026.4, Chapel Hill, North Caroline 27514, (USA] (Received September 29, 1986 in revised form January 16, 1987) The definitions of the term 'bibliometrics' as used in the literature are examined and evaluated. Most such definitions are held to be too broad. A new definition is proposed; then its advantages and possible defects pointed out. A crucial question is whether Zipf's law of word occurrence should be considered a part of this particular sub-discipline. The term "bibliometrics" was first used, so far as can be ascertained, in the Journal of Documentation, December 1969.1 There Fairthorne 2 had an article with "biblio- metric description" in its title-a term which he said was donated "inv ,luntarily" by AlanPritchard. Five pages after the close of Fairthorne's article came the short but famous one by Pritchard, "Statistical Bibliography or Bibliometrics?-3 Pritchard referred to the 1923 pamphlet-44 pages, representing two lectures at Cambridge-by Hulme: Statistical Bibliography in Relation to the Growth of Modern C%'vilization,4 which dealt with relationships among numbers of scientific papers, numbers of patents, amounts of exports, and other quantities. (In a 1978 publica- tion, Thackray picked up the two experessions, using "Statistical Bibliography: Bibliometrics of Science" as a topical heading; s and tracing the idea to a paper publishod six years before Hulme's.)Pritchard faulted the term "statistical biblio- graphy" as unsatisfactory for four reasons: (1) The expression had been used only four times during the intervening near-half- century. (How could he have been so sure? ICittig ~ has noted several other instances); (2) the term was clumsy; (3) it was not very descriptive; (4) it could have been taken to mean bibliographies on statistics. In turn, Pritchard became something of a pioneer by starting what has turned out to be a long string of definitions-most of them problematical-of the word "biblio- metrics": "the application of mathematics and statistical methods to books and other media of communication. ''7 Note how vague he was. Did he mean all other media?. Did he mean all the characteristics and elements of all these media? If so, he intended to cover a very wide area indeed. Peritz has observed that by 1970 (within a year or so of Pritchard's article in Elsevier, Amsterdam- Oxford-New York Akaddmiai Kiad6, Budapest

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Page 1: Toward a definition of “bibliometrics”

Scientometrics, Vol. 12. Nos 5 - 6 (1987) 373-379

TOWARD A DEFINITION OF "BIBLIOMETRICS"

R. N, BROADUS

School of Library Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ,

Manning Hall 026.4, Chapel Hill, North Caroline 27514, (USA]

(Received September 29, 1986 in revised form January 16, 1987)

The definitions of the term 'bibliometrics' as used in the literature are examined and evaluated. Most such definitions are held to be too broad. A new definition is proposed; then its advantages and possible defects pointed out. A crucial question is whether Zipf's law of word occurrence should be considered a part of this particular sub-discipline.

The term "bibliometrics" was first used, so far as can be ascertained, in the Journal

o f Documentation, December 1969.1 There Fairthorne 2 had an article with "biblio-

metric description" in its t i t le-a term which he said was donated "inv ,luntarily" by

AlanPritchard. Five pages after the close of Fairthorne's article came the short but

famous one by Pritchard, "Statistical Bibliography or Bibliometrics?-3

Pritchard referred to the 1923 pamphle t -44 pages, representing two lectures at

Cambridge-by Hulme: Statistical Bibliography in Relation to the Growth o f Modern

C%'vilization, 4 which dealt with relationships among numbers of scientific papers,

numbers of patents, amounts o f exports, and other quantities. (In a 1978 publica-

tion, Thackray picked up the two experessions, using "Statistical Bibliography:

Bibliometrics of Science" as a topical heading; s and tracing the idea to a paper

publishod six years before Hulme's.)Pritchard faulted the term "statistical biblio-

graphy" as unsatisfactory for four reasons:

(1) The expression had been used only four times during the intervening near-half- century. (How could he have been so sure? ICittig ~ has noted several other instances);

(2) the term was clumsy;

(3) it was not very descriptive;

(4) it could have been taken to mean bibliographies on statistics.

In turn, Pritchard became something of a pioneer by starting what has turned out

to be a long string of definit ions-most of them problematical-of the word "biblio-

metrics": "the application of mathematics and statistical methods to books and other

media o f communication. ' '7 Note how vague he was. Did he mean all other media?.

Did he mean all the characteristics and elements of all these media? If so, he intended

to cover a very wide area indeed.

Peritz has observed that by 1970 (within a year or so of Pritchard's article in

Elsevier, Amsterdam- Oxford-New York Akaddmiai Kiad6, Budapest

Page 2: Toward a definition of “bibliometrics”

R. N. BROADUS: DEFINITION OF BIBLIOMETRICS

Journal of Documentation), "Bibliometrics" was used as a heading in Library Litera- ture and in Library and Information Science Abstracts, but that it does not appear even in the index of The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. s Nor does the term show up in the tables of contents of the first six supplements to this seL Supplement seven (1987), however, carries an excellent article on the topic. "Biblio- metrics" is listed in the 1980 edition of the Library of Congress subject headings. 9 It didn't make the 1975 edition; "bibliomania" was the best they could do.

Most definitions of the word have been, like Pritchard's, wide-ranging and imprecise. Fairthorne, also in 1969, said that it denoted "quantitative treatment of the proper- ties of recorded discourse and behaviour appertaining to it. ' '1~ In view of the many possible kinds of properties of recorded discourse, and of the countless sorts of behavior that might pertain to it, this definition also seems unmanageably wide.

In the 1981 issue of Library Trends devoted to bibliometrics (a very valuable work), Schrader also advanced a brief and unspecific definition: "the scientific study of recorded discourse.'11 Recently, Boyce and Kraft, 12 while signifying the differ-

ence between communication and its physical manifestations, returned to an other- wise very general definition: "Bibliometrics is the quantitative study of written com- munication through its physical realization." Something of the same tone characterizes de Glas's observation that "generally speaking bibliometrics could be defined as the search for systematic patterns in comprehensive bodies of literature. "'13

Other writers have proposed narrower (and thus more meaningful) definitions.

Potter (1981) declared: "Bibliometrics is, simply put, the study and measurement of the publication patterns of all forms of written communication and their authors. ''14

Pritchard's 1981 bibliography on the subject "includes all studies which use or discuss statistical analyses of data relating to printed communication, e.g. citation studies, abstracts journals studies, publication counts, some circulation s tud ie s . . , and studies of individual elements within papers. . ."1 s Though this statement limits the word considerably, there were problems in its application. The bibliography includes, for instance, Wilson and Tauber's book The University Library, both editions; whereas only a tiny fraction of this work could be thought related in any direct way to biblio-

Machlup and Mansfield (1983) implied a definition perhaps, in one sense, too- limited, by noting: "statistical studies of the growth and distribution of the literature (e.g., the area known as bibliometrics). ''16 Both Shera 17 and Wilson, is in the same

volume, spoke of bibliometrics and citation analysis as if they might be separate, but most others would agree with e.g., Narin, who made citation analysis a principal com- ponent of Evaluative Bibliometrics 19 and with Potter, who has called citation studies

the most written-about element in bibliometrics. 2~ Somewhat more serviceable was the definition provided by the ALA Glossary of

Library and Information Science (1983): "The use of statistical methods in the ana-

374 Scientometrics 12 (1987)

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R. N. BROADUS: DJ~IqNITIOlq OF BIBLIOMETRICS

lysis of a body of literature to reveal the historical development of subject fields and

patterns of authorship, publication, and use. Formerly called statistical bibliography. '~ 1 Meanwhile, Garfield, Malin and Small had added another suggestion by including

the word "bibliographic:'i "Bibliometrics can be defined as the quantification of biblio- graphic information for use in analysis "'22

A more complete definition was published, also in 1978, by Nicholas and Ritchie: "Expressed simply 'bibliometrics' is the statistical or quantitative description of a literature-'literature' taken here to mean, simply, a group of related documents." Some of the characteristics of literature that may be described are "subject, document

f o r m . . . , language, country of publication, and date . . . . -23 Note that "literature" may

refer to the materials in a library collection. Thus the phenomena to be described are said to be groups of documents.

Harrod's Librarians" Glossary (1984)referred specifically to "the study of the use made of books and other media within and between library systems; ''24 thus both

would seem at variance with Hawkins's "quantitative analyses of the bibliographic features of a body of literature, ''2 s which might be taken to exclude the study of the use of physical volumes.

Donohue, writing less than three years after Pritchard had coined the expression, gave a limited and clear definition: 26 "quantitative analysis of gross bibliographical units such as books, journal article's, and the like.'"

In the first number of the Newsletter published by the Committee for Informetrics of the International Federation for Documentation, Ravichandra Rao avers that "among the several studies in bibliometrics, the following may be considered significant:" Law of Scattering, Inverse Square Law of Scientific Productivity (Lotka), Law of Least Effort (Zip/), Logarithmic models, Cumulative Advantage Process (Price). 2 7 There are, however, difficulties here. Three of these five have been certainly can be identified with bibliometrics (Bradford's Law of Scattering, Lotka's Inverse Square Law of Sci- entific Productivity, and Price's Cumulative Advantage Process) but of the other two it may be asked: Law of Least Effort in doing what? Logarithmic models to describe what? Only as they are applied to a certain group of things or phenomena do they have anything to do with "bibliometrics.'"

The problems associated with terminology are pointed up by Perrante, who in a 1978 article said that during the previous nine years, a search for material on biblio- metrics in the major indexes covering library and informatiori science would have necessitated use of 52 different subject headings. 2s While varying and indefinite usage of a word is to be expected in early stages, it is imperative that after nearly two decades a word as widely-used and as presumably important as this one carry precise meaning. A flabby term will will nbt do the job it ought to.

Unfortunately, the definitions cited above do not reflect satisfactory progress

Scien tometrics 12 (1987) 375

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R. N. BROADUS: DEFINITION OF BIBLIOMETRICS

toward precision and meaningfulness, but some of them (particularly those of

Donohue and of Nicholas and Ritchie) do contain useful elements that may be in- corporated into a trial definition. Definitions of words are, of course, based on their

usage, and no one is going to dictate that usage; therefore it may seem virtually im- possible to arrive at a sensible definition that will meet with universal approval, but

let us try one that would appear to have a degree of unity, with clear delimitations, without omitting too much that is commonly accepted as encompassed by the term:

"Bibliometrics is the quantitative study of physical published units, or of biblio- graphic units, or of the surrogates for either."

Such a definition includes any quantitative measures or analyses applied to, e.g.: physical items, such as number of volumes in a collection; number of titles (biblio-

graphic units), some of which may be multi-volume sets; numbers of articles published in a given field over a certain length of time;

numbers of articles in journals, chapters in collected works, etc. published by, say, one person.

Surrogates that may be treated include:

cards or other substitutes for physical books that are in circulation; references (footnotes) to bibliographic units such as monographs, chapters, or

periodical articles;

shelf list entries for items, whether physically on the shelves or not. Included could be studies of overlap, of reviews, and of books, articles, and other

units according to author, publisher, subject, date, language, format, etc. This definition would, perhaps unfortunately, make other fine distinctions. For

instance the estimate by Bolt Beranek and Newman that "the world's store of printed matter stands (1964) at approximately 200 million different books" would express a bibliometric measure, whereas their estimate of 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits of infor- mation 29 would not.

The definition proposed above undoubtedly is too narrow in the view of some

authorities, primarily because it excludes George K. Zipf's law of word occurrence, which is often treated as a bibliometric distribution. 30 There may be some advantage in considering this law a part of the body of bibliometric knowledge, since it deals with words, but not to be overlooked is the fact that counting of words and other internal units is in itself a large series of projects, deserving a name of its own. To cite a couple of examples: there is the set compiled by Brown, which includes a table giving the numbers and percentages of words that have one character, two characters, and so on, up through forty-five characters) 1 Another work tabulates the numbers of times given words occurred in two large samples of student classroom speeches. 32 Such studies as these are seldom, if ever, considered a part of the corpus of bibliographic information. There is an appreciable difference between the analysis

376 Scientometrics 12 (1987

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R. N. BROADUS: DEFINITION OF BIBLIOMETRICS

of bibliographic units and the analysis of words of a text. The counting of words

and other internal units, as is done in disciplines such as theology and English

literature, where texts are fundamental, would seem to be more at home in the same

class as Zipf than in the class of bibliometric studies as defined above. Incidental to this definition is the relationship of bibliometrics to scientometrics

and similar terms. Raian says rightly that bibliometrics "deals with various measures of literature and of documents and other media of communication," while sciento-

metrics has to do with scientific productivity and utility. 33

As implied by the scope of the journal Scientometrics, this term is, in one sense,

a broader one, including "all quantitative aspects of the science of science," and "the

development and the mechanisms of science. . , studied by means of (statistical)

mathematical methods." That so many articles in Scientometrics are bibliometric is not strange, because publications provide such important phenomena to use for measure-

ments. (Note the famous dictum of de Solla Price: 34 "I therefore propose, as a

formal definition, to take as science that which is published in scientific papers.") Vlachp 3s says of his 1985 bibliography that approximately a third of the entries are

about publications, and another third about citations, while journal studies account

for 17 percent, general information and communication processes for 11 percent and

mobility phenomena for 8 percent. The latter category, however, represents only a

selection, not full coverage. Vlach~ 36 also refers to information measures as the

"backbone of current scientometrics."

There is a large area of overlap, then, between bibliometrics and scientometrics,

bu; many of the former deal with matters other than the meassurement of science,

or scientists, or scientific activity, while, on the other hand, many of the measure-

ments interesting to scientometricians are based on data not derived from publication or other forms of communication.

In summary, there does seem to be a clearly delineated body of research involving

physical t/nits of publications, bibliographic citations, and surrogates for them. The

measurement of these items is called, logically, "bibliometrics."

References

1. The word does not appear in: R. W. BURCHFIELD (Ed.), A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, Vol. I, 1972.

2. R. A. FAIRTHORNE, Empir~'cal hyperbolic distributions (Bradford-Zipf-Mandelbrot) for bibliometric description and prediction, Journal o f Documentation, 25 (1969) 319.

3. A. PRITCHARD, Statistical bibliography or bibliometries?, .rournal o f Documentation, 25 (1969) 348.

4. E. W. HULME, Statistical Bibliography in Relation to the Growth o f Modern Civilization, London, Printed for the Author by Butler & Tanner; Grafton & Company, 1923.

Scientometries 12 (1987) 377

8

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R. N. BROADUS: DEFINITION OF BIBLIOMETRICS

5. A. THACKRAY, Measurement in the Historiography of Science, in: Yo ELKANA, J. LEDERBERG, R. MERTON, A. THACKRAY, H. ZUCKERMAN reds), Toward a Metric o f Science; The Advent of Science Indicators, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1978, p..11-30.

6. G. R, WITTIG, Statistical bibliography-a historical footnote, Journal of Documentation, 34 (1978) 240.

7. PRITCHARD, 1969 (op. cir., note 3) 349. 8. B. C. PERITZ, On the careers of terminologies; the ease of bibliometrics, Libri, 34 (1984)

233. 9. U. S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, SUBJECT CATALOGING DIVISION, Library of Congress

Subject Headings, 9th ed., Washington, Library of Congress, 1980, Vol. 1, p. 238. 10. FAIRTHORNE, 1969 (op. cit., note 2) 319. 11. A. SCHRADER, Teaching bibliometries, Library Trends, 30 (1981) 151. 12. B. R. BOYCE, D, H. KRAFT, Principles and theories in information science, in: M. E.

WILLIAMS (Ed,), Annual Review o f Information Science and Technology, Vol. 20, White Plains, N. Y;, Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc., 1985, p. 163.

13. F. DE GLAS, Fiction and bibliometries: Analyzing a publishing house's stocklist, Libri, 36 (1986) 40.

14. W, G. POTTER, Introduction, Library Trends, 30 (1981) 5. 15. A. PRITCHARD, in collaboration with G. R. WlTTIG, Bibliometrics, A Bibliography and

Index, Vol. 1, Watford, Hertz., U. K., ALLM Books, 1981, p. 3. 16. F. MACHLUP, U. MANSFIELD, Cultural diversity in studies of information, in: MACHLUP,

MANSFIELD (Eds), The Study of Information, Interdisciplinary Messages, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 19.83.

17. J. H. SHERA, Librarianship and information science, in: MACHLUP, MANSFIELD (Eds), 1983 (op cit., note 16) p. 381.

18. P. WILSON, Bibliographical R&D, in: MACHLUP, MANSFIELD reds), 19.83 (opcit., note 16) p. 392.

19. F. NARIN, Evaluative Bibliometrics: The Use of Publication and Otation Analysis in the Evaluation of Scientific Activity, Cherry Hill, N. J., Computer Horizons, Ine., 1976.

20. W. G. POTTER, 1981 (op cit., note 14) 6. 21. H. YOUNG (Ed.), The ALA Glossary of Library and Information Science, Chicago, American

Library Association, 1983, p. 22. (Italics in original.) 22. E. GARFIELD, M, V. MALIN, H. SMALL, Citation Data as Science Indicators, in: Y,

ELKANA et al. (Eds), 1978 (op. eit., note 5) p. 180. 23. D. NICHOLAS, M. RITCHIE, Literature and Bibliometrics, London, Clive Bingley, 1978, p.

9, 31. 24. R. PRYTHERCH (Ed.), Harrod's Librarians' Glossary, 5th ed., Aldershot, Hants., U, K.,

Gower, 1984, p. 74. 25. D. T. HAWKINS, Unconventional Uses of on-line information retrieval systems: On-line

bibliometric studies, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 28 (1977) 13. 26. J. C. DONOHUE, A bibliometrie analysis of certain information science literature, Journal of

the American Society for Information Science, 23 (1972) 313. 27. I. K. RAVICHANDRA RAO, Informetnes vis-a-vis bibliometrics, Newsletter of the Jnterna-

tional Federation for Documentation, Committee for Informatrics, No. 1 (1985) 4. 28. B. K. FERRANTE, Bibliometries: Access in the library literature, Collection Management, 2

(1978) 199. 29. BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN, INC. Toward the Library o.fthe 21st Century, Cambridge,

Mass., The Firm, 1964, p. 6, 43. 30. For examples: A. BOOKSTEIN, The bibliometric distributions, Library Quarterly, 46 (1976)

416; A BOOKSTEIN, Explanations of the bibliometric laws, Collection Management, 3 (1979)

378 Scientometries 12 (1987)

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151; R. E. WYLLYS, Empirical and theoretical bases of Zipf's law, Library Trends, 30 (1981) 53.

31. A. F. BROWN (Comp.), Normal and Reverse English Word List, Prepared at the University of Pennsylvania under a contract with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 1963, VoL 1, p.v.

32. L W. BLACK, C. S. STKATTON, A. C. NICHOLS, M. A. CHAVEZ, The Use of Words in Context: the Vocabulary of College Students, New York, Plenum Press, 1985.

33. T. N. RAJAN, Infonnatics: T.he concept and its ramifications, Newsletter of the International Federation for Documentation, Committee for Informetrics, No. 1 (1985) 1.

34. D. DE SOLLA PRICE, The parallel structures of science and technology, in: B. BARNES, D. EDGE (Eds), Science in Context, Readings in the Sociology of Science, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1982, p. 167.

35. J. VLACHY, Seientometric analysis in physics. A bibliography of publication, citation, and mobility studies, Czechoslovak Journal of Physics, Section B, 35 (1985) 2.

36. J. VLACHq~ Scientific analysis in physics-Where we stand, Czechoslovak Journal of Physics, Section B, 36 (1986) 1.

Scientometrics 12 (1987) 379