The individual author’s publication–citation process: theory and practice

The model proposed by Burrell (Information Processing and Management 28:637–645, 1992, Journal of Informetrics 1:16–25, 2007a) to describe the way that an individual author’s publication/citation career develops in time is investigated further, the aim being to describe in more detail the form of the citation distribution and the way it evolves over time. Both relative and actual frequency distributions are considered. Theoretical aspects are developed analytically and graphically and then illustrated using small empirical data sets relating to some well-known informetrics scholars. Perhaps surprisingly, it is found that the distribution may well be approximated in some cases by a simple geometric distribution.