Abstract
The bibliometric “laws” formulated by Bradford and Lotka have been applied to the literatures of a number of disciplines. In this instance, the laws are applied to citations to journals in 569 papers on higher education. Bradford's Law focuses on scatter, that is, the distribution of use of items; Lotka's Law concentrates on the productivity of authors. The conformity of higher education literature, as represented by the database used, is not perfect with the two bibliometric laws, but the results do suggest that the underlying concepts of the laws may well have applicability to examination of the discipline. A further suggestion is that this kind of examination has implications with regard to the means by which scholarship is communicated.
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Budd, J.M. A bibliometric analysis of higher education literature. Res High Educ 28, 180–190 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992890
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992890