AN EXACT FORMULATION OF BRADFORD'S LAW

Abstract

An exact, discrete formulation of Bradford's law describing the distribution of articles in journals is derived by showing that Bradford's law is a special case of the Zipf‐Mandelbrot ‘rank frequency’ law. A relatively simple method is presented for fitting the model to empirical data and estimating the number of journals and articles in a subject collection. This method is demonstrated with an example application.

Citation

LEIMKUHLER, F.F. (1980), "AN EXACT FORMULATION OF BRADFORD'S LAW", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 285-292. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026699