Abstract
The bibliometric “laws” formulated by Bradford and Lotka have been applied to the literatures of a number of disciplines. In this instance, the laws are applied to citations to journals in 569 papers on higher education. Bradford's Law focuses on scatter, that is, the distribution of use of items; Lotka's Law concentrates on the productivity of authors. The conformity of higher education literature, as represented by the database used, is not perfect with the two bibliometric laws, but the results do suggest that the underlying concepts of the laws may well have applicability to examination of the discipline. A further suggestion is that this kind of examination has implications with regard to the means by which scholarship is communicated.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bradford, Samuel C. (1950)Documentation. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press.
Bradford, Samuel C. (1934). Sources of information on specific subjects.Engineering 137(4): 85–86.
Brookes, Bertram C. (1969). Bradford's Law and the bibliography of science.Nature 224(5223): 953–956.
Brookes, Bertram C. (1968). The derivation and application of the Bradford-Zipf distribution.Journal of Documentation 24(4): 247–265.
Cline, Gloria S. (1981). Application of Bradford's Law to citation data.College & Research Libraries 42(1): 53–61.
Coile, Russell C. (1977). Lotka's frequency distribution of scientific productivity.Journal of the American Society for Information Science 28(6): 366–370.
Egghe, L. (1987). Applications of a theory of Bradford's Law to the calculation of Leimkuhler's Law and to the completion of bibliographies. Unpublished manuscript.
Groos, Ole V. (1967). Bradford's Law and Keenan-Atherton data.American Documentation 18(1): 46.
Gross, P. L. K., and Gross, E. M. (1927). College Libraries and chemical education.Science 66: 385–389.
Leimkuhler, Ferdinand F. (1967). The Bradford distribution.Journal of Documentation 23(3): 197–207.
Lotka, Alfred J. (1926). The frequency distribution of scientific productivity.Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 16(12): 317–323.
Price, Derek J. de Solla (1970). Citation measures of hard science, soft science, technology, and nonscience. In Carnot E. Nelson and Donald K. Pollock (eds.),Communication Among Scientists and Engineering. Lexington, Mass.: Heath Lexington.
Price, Derek de Solla (1976). A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processes.Journal of the American Society for Information Science 27(5): 292–306.
Pritchard, Alan (1969). Statistical bibliography of bibliometrics?Journal of Documentation 25(4): 348–349.
Silverman, Robert J. (1985). Higher Education as a Maturing Field? Evidence from Referencing Practices.Research in Higher Education 23(2): 150–183.
Smart, John C. (1983). Perceived quality and citation rates of education journals.Research in Higher Education 19(2): 175–182.
Smart, John C., and Elton, Charles F. (1981). Structural characteristics and citation rates of education journals.American Educational Research Journal 18(4): 399–413.
Smith, Linda C. (1981). Citation analysis.Library Trends 30(1): 83–106.
Vickery, B. C. (1948). Bradford's Law of Scattering.Journal of Documentation 4(4): 198–203.
Walberg, Herbert J., Vukosavich, Peter, and Tsai, Shoiw-Ling (1981). Scope and structure of the journal literature in educational research.Educational Researcher 10(8): 11–13.
Wilkinson, Elizabeth A. (1972). The ambiguity of Bradford's Law.Journal of Documentation 28(2): 122–130.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Budd, J.M. A bibliometric analysis of higher education literature. Res High Educ 28, 180–190 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992890
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992890