The duality of informetric systems with applications to the empirical laws
Journal of Information Science
The duality of informatic systems with applications to the empirical laws
The duality of informatic systems with applications to the empirical laws
Implications of ambiguity for scientometric measurement
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology - Special issue on the still the frontier: Information Science at the Millenium
The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information
The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information
Zipfian and Lotkaian continuous concentration theory: Research Articles
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Systems without low-productive sources
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal - Special issue: Informetrics
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal - Special issue: Informetrics
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Networks, fractals and complexity: web-based information patterns
Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
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Power laws as defined in 1926 by A. Lotka are increasing in importance because they have been found valid in varied social networks including the Internet. In this article some unique properties of power laws are proven. They are shown to characterize functions with the scale-free property (also called self-similarity property) as well as functions with the product property. Power laws have other desirable properties that are not shared by exponential laws, as we indicate in this paper. Specifically, Naranan (1970) proves the validity of Lotka's law based on the exponential growth of articles in journals and of the number of journals. His argument is reproduced here and a discrete-time argument is also given, yielding the same law as that of Lotka. This argument makes it possible to interpret the information production process as a self-similar fractal and show the relation between Lotka's exponent and the (self-similar) fractal dimension of the system. Lotkaian informetric systems are self-similar fractals, a fact revealed by Mandelbrot (1977) in relation to nature, but is also true for random texts, which exemplify a very special type of informetric system. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.