Examines the properties of bibliometric distributions (application of mathematics and statistical methods to books and other written communications) in a nontechnical manner, covering similarities of the Lotka, Bradford, and Zipf distributions, the relationship between empirical laws and theories, and bibliometric concepts and theory construction.…

A rudimentary description of Markov Chains is presented in order to introduce its use to describe and to predict authors' movements among subareas of the discipline of ethnomusicology. Other possible applications are suggested. (Author)

Discusses the literature that has become associated with Lotka's Law of Scientific Productivity (a general theoretical estimate of author productivity in the sciences) and attempts to identify the important factors of Lotka's original methodology that should be considered when attempting to test applicability of Lotka's Law. Forty-seven references…

Examines the citation patterns for scientific journal articles and discusses reasons for the skewed distributions of article citedness. Topics discussed include the article age distribution; citations to articles from single journals; citedness of articles written by the same author; possible model distributions of citedness; and citedness as an…