En bibliometrisk undersökning av bibliometrins utveckling : Undersökning av hur publikationen av bibliometriska, informetriska, scientometriska och webometriska artiklar har utvecklats sedan 1960- talet

The main purpose of this bachelor thesis is to analyse the publication- and citation patterns of the articles concerning bibliometrics, informetrics, scientometrics, and webometrics which can be found on Web of Science, and give a brief description of how the definition of the four terms has developed. I have looked at how the number of published papers have developed over the years and to what extent they have been quoted by other researchers. I have also briefly adressed what other research fields are referring to articles published in the four areas. The material I looked at includes articles that can be found on Web of Science with one (or more) of the four terms as topic and are categorised under library- and information science starting with the first bibliometrics article which was published in 1969, and ending in 2013. The results show that the publications in all four fields are continuously increasing. For bibliometrics and scientometrics it shows a slow increase up until 2005, then increasing exponentially. Informetric seems to be a comparatively small topic and webometrics is increasing, but is still a relatively young topic which makes it hard to make any concrete conclusions Regarding the citations, it shows that citations for the bibliometrical articles have had a steady curve increasing up until 2005, and then decreasing, the informetric- and scientometrical articles have rather scattered results and the webometrics have decreasing results, which I deduce is based on the fact that it is a new field and citations do not appear until after a few years. Finally I recommend future research, based on the related research I have found.