Investigates the Leimkuhler curve and the Gini index from a probabilistic viewpoint for studying the concentration of bibliometric distributions. The importance of the time parameter and the special nature of the "nonproducers" in bibliometric studies are examined, standard models of bibliometric processes are described, and further…

Illustrates that the Poisson-lognormal model provides good fits to a diverse set of distributions commonly studied in bibliometrics and scientometrics. Topics discussed include applications to the empirical data sets related to the laws of Lotka, Bradford, and Zipf; causal processes that could generate lognormal distributions; and implications for…

Describes a study that was conducted to model the navigation patterns followed by users when retrieving information in hypertext systems. The development of two frequency distribution models is explained, the influence of search tasks on path patterns is discussed, and further research is described. (Contains 17 references.) (LRW)

Describes study that compared terminology indexing and citation indexing to determine the similarity of documents retrieved. Information science articles from 1971 to 1983 in three journals were studied for term co-occurrences. The distinction between relevant and pertinent documents is discussed, and further research topics are suggested. (LRW)

Discussion of online bibliographic database searches focuses on a software system, SORT-AID/SABRE, that ranks retrieved citations in terms of relevance. Results of a comprehensive user evaluation of the relevance ranking procedure to determine its effectiveness are presented, and implications for future work are suggested. (10 references) (LRW)