A Noninformetric Analysis of the Relationship between Citation Age and Journal Productivity

A problem, raised bywallace (JASIS, 37, 136-145, 1986), on the relation between the journalʹs median citation age and its number of articles is studied. Leaving open the problem as such, we give a statistical explanation of this relationship, when replacing "median" by "mean" in Wallaceʹs problem. The cloud of points, found by Wallace, is explained in this sense that the points are scattered over the area in first quadrant) limited by a curve of the form y=E\x^2+1, where E is a constant. This curve is obtained by using the Central Limit Theorem in statistics and, hence, has no intrinsic informetric foundation. The article closes with some reflections on explanations of regularities in informetrics, based on statistical, probabilistic or informetric results, or on a combination thereof.