Lotka’s Law of Scientific Productivity Across the Research Disciplines: A Review

This study reviewed 155 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers to examine the applicability of Lotka’s Law to specific research disciplines or topics. Bibliometric techniques were used to analyze characteristics of the included papers, such as publication year, discipline, authorship patterns, proportion of single- and multi-authored papers, and country of origin. The study investigated authors’ reports on whether publication output in specific disciplines or topics conformed to Lotka’s Law using two methods. First, a chi square analysis was used to examine the prevalence of publication patterns following Lotka’s law. Second, two independent samples t-tests were conducted to examine whether reviews that did and did not find support for Lotka’s law varied by number of studies reviewed or the length (in years) of the review. The findings indicate that authors often reported conformity to Lotka’s Law, and this conformity did not vary significantly with the number of studies or review duration. However, the frequency distribution of scientific productivity in bibliometric reviews examining Lotka’s Law does not comply with Lotka’s Law, with fewer authors (9%) publishing multiple research articles than expected.