Becoming Metric-Wise: A Bibliometric Guide for Researchers aims to inform researchers about metrics so that they become aware of the evaluative techniques being applied to their scientific output. Understanding these concepts will help them during their funding initiatives, and in hiring and tenure. The book not only describes what indicators do (or are designed to do, which is not always the same thing), but also gives precise mathematical formulae so that indicators can be properly understood and evaluated. Metrics have become a critical issue in science, with widespread international discussion taking place on the subject across scientific journals and organizations. As researchers should know the publication-citation context, the mathematical formulae of indicators being used by evaluating committees and their consequences, and how such indicators might be misused, this book provides an ideal tome on the topic.

This book describes informetric results from the point of view of Lotkaian size-frequency functions, i.e. functions that are decreasing power laws. Explanations and examples of this model are given showing that it is the most important regularity amongst other possible models. This theory is then developed in the framework of IPPs (Information Production Processes) hereby also indicating its relation with e.g. the law of Zipf.

Applications are given in the following fields: three-dimensional informetrics (positive reinforcement and Type/Token-Taken informetrics), concentration theory (including the description of Lorenz curves and concentration measures in Lotkaian informetrics), fractal complexity theory (Lotkaian informetrics as self-similar fractals), Lotkaian informetrics in which items can have multiple sources (where fractional size-frequency functions are constructed), the theory of first-citation distributions and the N-fold Cartesian product of IPPs (describing frequency functions for N-grams and N-word phrases). In the Appendix, methods are given to determine the parameters in the law of Lotka, based on a set of discrete data.

The book explains numerous informetric regularities, only based on a decreasing power law as size-frequency function, i.e. Lotka's law. It revives the historical formulation of Alfred Lotka of 1926 and shows the power of this power law, both in classical aspects of informetrics (libraries, bibliographies) as well as in "new" applications such as social networks (citation or collaboration networks and the Internet).

This title describes how best to use statistical data to produce professional reports on library activities. The authors cover data gathering, sampling, graphical representation of data and summary statistics from data, and also include a section on trend analysis. A full bibliography and a subject index make this a key title for any information professional..

Most information services suffer from the requirement to perform better with fewer staff and resources. Therefore it is necessary for information managers to report on all their activities in order to be able to make effective claims for additional funding or to prevent further funding cuts. This book describes the different steps that are necessary to produce professional reports: data gathering (electronic or otherwise), sampling, graphical representation of data, summary statistics from data (including percentiles), confidence intervals for averages of data, comparison of two averages. Trend analysis (over time) and regression analysis are also discussed.