An evaluation of Bradfordizing effects

The purpose of this paper is to apply and evaluate the bibliometric method Bradfordizing for information retrieval (IR) experiments. Bradfordizing is used for generating core document sets for subject-specific questions and to reorder result sets from distributed searches. The method will be applied and tested in a controlled scenario of scientific literature databases from social and political sciences, economics, psychology and medical science (SOLIS, SoLit, USB Köln Opac, CSA Sociological Abstracts, World Affairs Online, Psyndex and Medline) and 164 standardized topics. An evaluation of the method and its effects is carried out in two laboratory-based information retrieval experiments (CLEF and KoMoHe) using a controlled document corpus and human relevance assessments. The results show that Bradfordizing is a very robust method for re-ranking the main document types (journal articles and monographs) in today’s digital libraries (DL). The IR tests show that relevance distributions after re-ranking improve at a significant level if articles in the core are compared with articles in the succeeding zones. The items in the core are significantly more often assessed as relevant, than items in zone 2 (z2) or zone 3 (z3). The improvements between the zones are statistically significant based on the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the paired T-Test

Why is a new Journal of Informetrics needed?

In our study we analysed 3.889 records which were indexed in the Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database in the research field of informetrics. We can show the core journals of the field via a Bradford (power law) distribution and corroborate on the basis of the restricted LISA data set that it was the appropriate time to found a new specialized journal dedicated to informetrics. According to Bradford's Law of scattering (pure quantitative calculation), Egghe's Journal of Informetrics (JOI) first issue to appear in 2007, comes most probable at the right time.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Journal Productivity in Fishery Science an informetric analysis

Knowledge is a human resource which has the ability to consolidate the valuable results of human thinking and civilization through different times. It is the totality of understanding of nature and its features for improved quality of life of human society. Because of this, knowledge has been increasing in volume, dimension and directions. The term ‘information’ and 'knowledge' are often used as if they are interchangeable. Information is ‘potential knowledge‘ which is converted into knowledge by the integration of memory of human beings. In modern times there is a confusion on knowledge usage. Therefore an understanding of the concept ‘knowledge’ is needed for formulation of strategies in information science

Science Models as Value-Added Services for Scholarly Information Systems

The paper introduces scholarly Information Retrieval (IR) as a further dimension that should be considered in the science modeling debate. The IR use case is seen as a validation model of the adequacy of science models in representing and predicting structure and dynamics in science. Particular conceptualizations of scholarly activity and structures in science are used as value-added search services to improve retrieval quality: a co-word model depicting the cognitive structure of a field (used for query expansion), the Bradford law of information concentration, and a model of co-authorship networks (both used for re-ranking search results). An evaluation of the retrieval quality when science model driven services are used turned out that the models proposed actually provide beneficial effects to retrieval quality. From an IR perspective, the models studied are therefore verified as expressive conceptualizations of central phenomena in science. Thus, it could be shown that the IR perspective can significantly contribute to a better understanding of scholarly structures and activities.Comment: 26 pages, to appear in Scientometric

Applying Science Models for Search

The paper proposes three different kinds of science models as value-added services that are integrated in the retrieval process to enhance retrieval quality. The paper discusses the approaches Search Term Recommendation, Bradfordizing and Author Centrality on a general level and addresses implementation issues of the models within a real-life retrieval environment.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, ISI 201

Classical Laws of Informatrics : An Overview

Classical laws of bibliometrics – Bradford’s law, Lotka’s and Zipf’s law – are discussed, with emphasis on to law of scattering and inverse square law of scientific productivity. Two different approaches to bibliometric distributions – size and rank frequency approaches, characteristics of bibliometric distributions are discusse

Analysis of innovation and economic growth through the development of renewable energies

Sustainability has caused industries to generate new technologies based on renewable energy; resulting in innovation and development processes within the sector. From this panorama, this article is carried out in order to analyze the scientific production related to renewable or alternative energies as a source of innovation and economic development. At the methodological level, a bibliometric-based documentary study is proposed, which is carried out in the scopus database with a search equation that starts from the variables: "Economic development", "Renewable energies" and "Innovation". The results of the search carried out show a total of 674 documents in the time window of 1994-2023; and observing Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Renewable Energy, Journal of Environmental Management, Sustainability (Switzerland), Energies and Journal of Cleaner Production as main sources. It is concluded that scientific production has grown since 2015, possibly linked to subsequent programs to the sustainable development goals, and with an exponential peak since 2020. This is linked to the new achievements and findings of the energy industry in the field of sustainability

Using local citation data to relate the use of journal articles by academic researchers to the coverage of full-text document access systems

The methodology and findings are presented of an empirical study comparing local citation patterns with the holdings lists of a number of sources of journal articles. These sources were the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC and the BL inside service, library holdings, ProQuest Direct, SearchBank, EiText and a linking system including both the Geobase database and the BLDSC. The value of local citation figures is discussed, as is the concept of a 'core' of journal titles, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Using these figures to represent the local use of journal articles, the coverage of the document sources was found to vary widely. Unsurprisingly, the BLDSC was found to offer the widest coverage. Newer, electronic systems generally fared less well, but may offer other advantages

Application of Bradford’s law of scattering on research publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics of India

The present study is focused on examining the application of Bradford’s law of scattering on research articles published in the field of Astronomy & Astrophysics by Indian scientist during 1988-2017. The bibliographic data was retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) bibliographic data base for different period of time. Total 18,877 journal’s article have been published by Indian scientist in the field of Astronomy & Astrophysics during 1988-2017 which was further retrieved and analyzed separately for different blocks of 10 years as well as for 30 years consolidated too. The core journal of the field was identified. The Bradford law of scattering and Leimkuhler model was also tested to verify the data set and failed to establish the consistency in scattering of literature due to high level concentration of articles in very few journals