From statistical bibliography to bibliometrics

Abstract

The author’s intention in this paper is to inform the broader public of the historical development and major concepts of bibliometrics as an area of quantitative study of written communication, which today applies a set of modern methods and techniques of high-level statistical and mathematical formalization.
 Statistical and other quantitative concepts, models and methods have taken on increasing importance over the past decades and aroused the interest of researchers from disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to the study of various phenomena in their own fields of study by using nomotetic practices aimed at the general search for ideographic principles derived from individual cases. Different scientific fields have developed separate subdisciplines to try to quantify and measure the different variables of (non)material world, for example the quantification of mental activities within psychometrics, feelings and interpersonal relationships in sociometrics, empirical evidence of economic principles in econometrics, the application of economic theories and techniques in the study of social and economic history in cliometrics, the quantitative study of sets of bibliographic records of human creativity within bibliometrics.