Aging, obsolescence, impact, growth, and utilization: definitions and relations

The notions aging, obsolescence, impact, growth, utilization, and their relations are studied. It is shown how to correct an observed citation distribution for growth, once the growth distribution is known. The relation of this correction procedure with the calculation of impact measures is explained. More interestingly, we have shown how the influence of growth on aging can be studied over a complete period as a whole. Here, the difference between the so-called average and global aging distributions is the main factor. Our main result is that growth can influence aging but that it does not cause aging. A short overview of some classical articles on this topic is given. Results of these earlier works are placed in the framework set up in this article.

[1]  Eddie Ray Stinson.  Diachronous vs. Synchronous Study of Obsolescence , 1981 .

[2]  F. W. Lancaster,et al.  Synchronous versus diachronous methods in the measurement of obsolescence by citation studies , 1987, J. Inf. Sci..

[3]  Ronald Rousseau,et al.  Citation distribution of pure mathematics journals , 1988 .

[4]  Ronald Rousseau,et al.  The burgundy effect in off-line union catalogs of serials , 1991 .

[5]  Jean Tague,et al.  The Law of Exponential Growth: Evidence, Implications and Forecasts. , 1981 .

[6]  Maurice B. Line,et al.  THE ‘HALF‐LIFE’ OF PERIODICAL LITERATURE: APPARENT AND REAL OBSOLESCENCE , 1970 .

[7]  IAN ROWLANDS,et al.  Patterns of Scholarly Communication in Information Policy: A Bibliometric Study , 1999 .

[8]  R. E. Burton,et al.  The “half‐life” of some scientific and technical literatures , 1960 .

[9]  Emilio Matricciani,et al.  The probability distribution of the age of references in engineering papers , 1991 .

[10]  V. Plerou,et al.  Similarities between the growth dynamics of university research and of competitive economic activities , 1999, Nature.

[11]  Leo Egghe,et al.  Mathematical relations between impact factors and average number of citations , 1988, Inf. Process. Manag..

[12]  Pauline A. Scales.  CITATION ANALYSES AS INDICATORS OF THE USE OF SERIALS: A COMPARISON OF RANKED TITLE LISTS PRODUCED BY CITATION COUNTING AND FROM USE DATA , 1976 .

[13]  I. K. Ravichandra Rao,et al.  Citation Age Data and the Obsolescence Function: Fits and Explanations , 1992, Inf. Process. Manag..

[14]  C. V. Clark.  Obsolescence of the Patent Literature. , 1976 .

[15]  Danny P. Wallace.  The relationship between journal productivity and obsolescence , 1986 .

[16]  R. Rousseau.  Sitations: an exploratory study , 1997 .

[17]  Guido Van Hooydonk,et al.  Journal production and journal impact factors , 1996 .

[18]  Michael K. Buckland.  ARE OBSOLESCENCE AND SCATTERING RELATED , 1972 .

[19]  Leo Egghe,et al.  Averaging and globalising quotients of informetric and scientometric data , 1996, J. Inf. Sci..

[20]  Jean Tague-Sutcliffe,et al.  An Introduction to Informetrics , 1992, Inf. Process. Manag..

[21]  D J PRICE,et al.  NETWORKS OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS. , 1965, Science.

[22]  M. Tsay.  Library journal use and citation half-line in medical science , 1998 .

[23]  B. C. Brookes.  Obsolescence of special library periodicals: Sampling errors and utility contours , 1970 .

[24]  Virgil Diodato,et al.  Obsolescence of music literature , 1993 .

[25]  M. Carl Drott,et al.  The aging of Scientific literature: a citation Analysis , 1979, J. Documentation.

[26]  H. Abt.  Why some papers have long citation lifetimes , 1998, Nature.

[27]  Duncan MacRae,et al.  Growth and Decay Curves in Scientific Citations , 1969 .