Lotka's law
Ley de Lotka
- Date
- 1926 · confidence low
- Place
- New York City, United States
- Credited to
- Alfred J. Lotka
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
A bibliometric law, formulated by Alfred J. Lotka, describing the distribution of scientific productivity: few authors publish many papers while the great majority publish very few, following a power-law distribution related to Zipf's law.
What it led to
- Foundation of modern bibliometrics and scientometrics
- Application in evaluating scientific and institutional productivity
- Comparison with other distribution laws such as Zipf's and Pareto's