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Theory and practice of the shifted Lotka function

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

One of the major drawbacks of the classical Lotka function is that arguments only start from the value 1. However, in many applications one may want to start from the value 0, e.g. when including zero received citations. In this article we consider the shifted Lotka function, which includes the case of zero items. Basic results for the total number of sources, the total number of items and the average number of items per source are given in this framework. Next we give the rank-frequency function (Zipf-type function) corresponding to the shifted Lotka function and prove their exact relation. The article ends with a practical example which can be fitted by a shifted Lotka function.
Journal: SCIENTOMETRICS
ISSN: 0138-9130
Issue: 1
Volume: 91
Pages: 295 - 301
Publication year:2012
Keywords:Shifted Lotka function, Shifted Zipf function, Power laws, Zero citations
BOF-keylabel:yes
IOF-keylabel:yes
BOF-publication weight:3
CSS-citation score:1
Authors from:Higher Education
Accessibility:Closed