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acknowledgement. A personal expression of thanks to others that an author may place in his/her article or book. Compare with peer interactive communication.
In the sample reference, Cronin, McKenzie, and Stiffler (1992) analyze the acknowledgements appearing in 20 years of four library and information science journals. They test for a correlation between highly cited and highly acknowledged individuals.
adaption innovation theory. See Kirton adaption innovation theory.
adaptor. An individual who (1) modifies his/her usual activities by accepting or using a new or changed device or idea; or (2) tends not to innovate (and not to introduce new ideas to colleagues) but instead receives and uses new devices and ideas developed by others. Compare with adopter, innovator.
In the first sense, to be an adaptor may require also being an adopter. For example, if a historian accepts an electronic spreadsheet as a new way of recording data, the historian has adapted his/her activities by adopting the new method.
In the second sense, being an adaptor is seen as the opposite of being an innovator. For example, assume a historian accepts an electronic spreadsheet as a new way to record data. Where did the historian get this new idea? If historian A gets the idea from historian B, then historian A is an adaptor. Historian B is an innovator, if historian B thought of the idea and then shared it with historian A.
adjusted count. One way to determine how many documents a person has authored. This is an issue when one is analyzing publications with multiple authors (authorship, multiple). Compare with complete count, straight count.
For an example of an adjusted count, assume there are four documents with the following authors:
Document 1 is authored by Queen, Jack, and King;
Document 2 is authored by Jack;
Document 3 is authored by King and Queen.
Document 4 is authored by Jack and Jill.
When doing an adjusted count, the rule is to use fractions to distribute responsibility for multiple authorship. A common way to calculate each author’s responsibility is to be sure that the tallies for all the authors of a single document always add up to 1. So, in Document 1 above, Queen, Jack, and King are each counted as 1/3. In Document 2, Jack is counted as 1. In Document 3, King and Queen are each counted as 1/2. In Document 4, Jack and Jill are each counted as 1/2. In summary:
Queen has 1/3 + 1/2 = 5/6 of a publication;
Jack has 1/3 + 1 + 1/2 = 1 5/6 publications;
King has 1/3 + 1/2 = 5/6 of a publication;
Jill has 1/2 of a publication.
In the first sample reference, Lindsey (1980) suggests a method for doing an adjusted count and then compares adjusted and complete (or normal) counts of the same collection of documents.
In the second sample reference, Nicholls (1989) examines 30 studies of Lotka’s law and indicates how each researcher counts authorship.
adopter. An individual who accepts or uses a new or changed device or idea. There can be many adopters for a single item. Therefore, an adopter is not usually the very first person to adopt, but the term is sometimes used to refer to the first group of people to become adopters over a specified period of time.
The concept is important in the study of how scholars, scientists, and professionals communicate with each other. For example, it is interesting to determine the characteristics of the first adopters of a new medical treatment, a new statistical tool, or a new phrase. Compare with adaptor, innovator.
In the sample reference, Messeri (1988) compares scientists’ ages with their tendency to adopt or not adopt new theories in the field of plate tectonics.
advertising content. The type and number of advertisements found in a document.
In the sample reference, Kazlauskas, DeYoe, and Smith (1989) analyze advertisements in microcomputer periodicals.
affiliation. The organization or place of business with which an author is associated. Compare with endogenous document, exogenous document.
Analyses of affiliation can be used to evaluate or compare organizations or journals.
In the first sample reference, Herubel (1990) examines the affiliation of authors of articles, notes, and reviews that appear in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
In the second sample reference, Williamson (1989) reports on the occupation, gender, and geographic location of authors in five regional library journals.
age, citation. See citation age; mean citation age; median citation age.
age, human. A characteristic studied in scholarly communication and scientometrics. For example, one may examine: the correlation between age and research performance; the link between age and creativity; whether age is a factor in the Matthew effect; or if age affects how quickly a person becomes an adoptor of new methods and theories.
In the sample reference, Messeri (1988) studies the correlation between age and the adoption of new theories.
ageing or aging. See obsolescence.
allocitation. A citation from one document to another such that there is no self citation (opposed to autocitation). The two documents do not share a common author.
In the sample reference, van der Heij, van der Burg, Cressie, and Wedel (1990) introduce this term. See autocitation for a quote from their paper.
article cohort. See Bradford article cohort.
Arts & Humanities Citation Index®. A publication of the Institute for Scientific Information. In its citation index it indicates who cites whom, and so it can be a source of data for a citation analysis in the arts and humanities.
associativity. The mean number of authors per document in a group of documents. Compare with author number; authorship, multiple; collaboration.
If one subject area averages 2.5 authors per article and a second subject area averages 1.1 authors per article, then in some sense the authors in the first field associate with each other more than the authors in the second field.
In the sample reference, Chatelin and Arvanitis (1992) compare associativity with other bibliometric indicators of science activity in Cote d’Ivoire.
attraction power of a journal. The portion of articles that the journal publishes by authors outside the country, language, or organization usually associated with the journal. Compare with exogenous documents.
For example, if a journal is published in France and if there is no restriction on the language of publication, a 100 percent attraction rate for the journal means that all the articles are in languages other than French.
In the sample reference, Arvanitis and Chatelin (1988) study the attraction power of journals published in northern nations to authors who live in southern countries.
author cocitation analysis. See cocitation analysis, author.
author impact factor. See impact factor, author.
author number. The number of authors of a document. Compare with associativity; authorship, multiple; collaboration.
In the sample reference, White (1991) examines correlation...
