Bibliometrics originates in law
Some scholars have traced the origins of bibliometrics to the end of the 19th century, with studies in chemistry or in psychology (1). However, there is evidence of publication counts in law as early as the early 19th century. In 1817, an American law teacher mentioned “at least 530” volumes dedicated to judicial decisions; he repeated the study four years later to find “not less than 600”. This was followed in 1826 by a count of English reports published to date and in 1876 by an estimate of the number of English, Irish, Scottish, Canadian and American volumes published until 1874. This is publication analysis in its simplest form, but could be regarded as a bibliometric study none-the-less.
It can even be argued that the roots of citation indexing reach further back. For instance, in 1743, Raymond’s Reports contained tables listing the cases cited by the cases published in that volume (2). In 1783, Douglas’s Reports included an “index of Cases Cited” as a separate table, and a similar, but full-size, citation index was published in 1821. Surely the use of citations here strengthens the case.
References
(1) Godin, B. (2006) “On the origins of bibliometrics”, Scientometrics, Vol. 68, Issue 1, pp. 109–33.
(2) Shapiro, F.R. (1992) “Origins of bibliometrics, citation indexing, and citation analysis: the neglected legal literature”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol. 43, Issue 5, pp. 337–39.
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