Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 84 (2): 213-216, 2011
COMMENTARY
Does the production of ISI papers by Chilean ecologists (sensu lato) fit Lotka’s
(1926) law?
Recently, two new bibliometric indicators were proposed to gauge the
productivity of ISI papers and applied to a sample of 120 Chilean ecologists (sensu lato). The purpose of these indexes was
to make a correction of the h-index for the number of coauthors and the number of self-citations as well as to a scientific
age-standardization of that index. However, an analysis of residuals from the regression of the logarithm of the number of
alocitations (correlated with the h-index) showed little effect of both, the number of coauthors and of self- citations and
showed that the examination of the residuals is a more robust bibliometric indicator. Nevertheless, in this comment I use
that database and, through a log-log regression analysis and the use of the LOTKA computer program, I show that Chilean
ecologists do not follow the scientometric law of Lotka (1926), which postulates that only a minority of authors produces
most of the articles published in a particular subject area.
Key words:
h-index,
LOTKA computer program, quadratic law, scientific productivity, scientometrics
