The Simon-Yule approach to bibliometric modeling

Abstract

Using an index approach to take into account the scattering pattern of the observed values, Chen and Leimkuhler showed that the three well-known bibliometric distributions (i.e., Lotka's law of scientific productivity, Bradford's law of bibliographic scattering, and Zipf's law of word frequency) are equivalent. Furthermore, Chen showed that Lotka's law can be derived from a generating mechanism (the Simon-Yule Model) proposed by Herbert A. Simon. In this paper, we use a simulation algorithm based on the Simon-Yule model to conduct computational experimentation on these three laws. The results indicate that the probability of a new entry (α), be it constant or decreasing, determines the characteristics of all three distributions.