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Discrete power law with exponential cutoff and Lotka's law
Author(s) -
Smolinsky Lawrence
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.903
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 2330-1643
pISSN - 2330-1635
DOI - 10.1002/asi.23763
Subject(s) - cutoff , power law , law , exponential function , statistical physics , mathematics , power (physics) , econometrics , mathematical economics , physics , statistics , mathematical analysis , political science , thermodynamics , quantum mechanics
One of the first bibliometric laws appeared in Alfred J. Lotka's 1926 examination of author productivity in chemistry and physics. The result was a productivity distribution described by a power law. In this paper, Lotka's original data on author productivity in chemistry are reconsidered. We define a discrete power law with exponential cutoff, test Lotka's data, and compare the fit to the discrete power law.