Lotka's law and authorship distribution in nutrition research in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper examines the validity of Lotka's law to authorship distribution in the field of nutrition research in Bangladesh. A list of periodical articles on various aspects of nutrition research in Bangladesh published during 1972-2006 was compiled for analysis. Using "full productivity" of authorship, a total of 998 personal author names were identified. Lotka's law was tested using both generalized and modified fonns and Kolmogorov-Smimov goodness-of-fit tests were applied. The results suggest that author productivity distribution predicted in Lotka's generalized inverse square law is not applicable to nutrition research of Bangladesh. Using least-squares excluding high productive authors and maximum likelihood methods, Lotka's law is found to be applicable to nutrition research of Bangladesh.