on Thu, 1 Aug 2002 Dan Lester <dan@riverofdata.com> wrote

[snip]

>          When Price described 'big science' in 1963, he wrote,
>          "if we know how many papers are published in a field,
>          we can compute the number of men who have written them."
>          [LITTLE SCIENCE BIG SCIENCE p. 63] I really don't think
>          that anything has changed since then.
>
> I'm glad you "don't think anything has changed" since then.  Once
> again, I'd like some citations that show that nothing has changed. If
> all that Price said forty years ago is still valid, I'm sure that some
> scholar would have revalidated it in the last decade, at least.  If
> nothing has changed in this field, it is probably the only field in
> all of human knowledge that has NOT changed in the last forty years.

        We are not speaking of "all that Price said forty
        years ago." He revised his thinking, particularly
        on his projections that the growth of science must
        soon flatten out. It hasn't, of course. Some of the
        examples that he gave to support this idea were
        deeply flawed.

        We are only speaking of Lotka's 1926 law of
        scientific productivity [authorship] as developed
        by Price. Here are two citations, suggesting that
        the distribution of authorship has not changed:
        (1) A. Bookstein challenged Lotka's Law in
        considerable detail and found it to be solid. [JASIS.
        41:376-386. 1990]
        (2) John C. Huber implied the law is alive
        and well when he used a new model to generate
        Lotka's law, fitting empirical distributions
        well. [JASIS. 53:209-219. 2002]

----------2
on Thu, 01 Aug 2002 Frieda Rosenberg <friedat@email.unc.edu> wrote.

....snip.....
> >         When Price described 'big science' in 1963, he wrote,
> >         "if we know how many papers are published in a field,
> >         we can compute the number of men who have written them."
> >         [LITTLE SCIENCE BIG SCIENCE p. 63] I really don't think
> >         that anything has changed since then.
>
> Can't find.  Perhaps it was dropped from the posthumous 1986 edition?

        In the 1986 paperback, see page 44 in the para
        beginning "The modified law ..."

> As to the below, another magic idea:  Reduce price (most of which goes
> "straight to profitability.")  Then, magically, libraries will be able
> to afford more journals.

        You must mean that by reducing the number of R&D
        projects, fewer papers would lead to reduced costs
        and lower journal prices.

        More important, if the emphasis of R&D were shifted
        into the preparation of research, executions would
        be of higher quality. There would be fewer papers
        and fewer errors, duplications, etc.

        Productivity in science depends on better (not less)
        inputs that reduce errors, omissions, and blind
        duplications. Where modern research management went
        wrong was in reducing financial inputs. That achieved
        mere financial productivity at the cost of quality.

        Yes. By all means. Get the researchers back into the
        libraries. Get some librarians to help them. Work
        smarter, not harder.

        If you are saying, 'No more bad research!' I agree.

        Best wishes,

Albert Henderson
Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
<70244.1532@compuserve.com>

PS      Most of journal pricing, by the way, goes to
        production and overhead, not to profit. You can
        see this clearly from the operating statements of
        any public publisher.

.