Demystification of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, Informetrics and Webometrics

Among the many statistical analyses of scientific publications, bibliometrics holds a privileged place for counting scientific papers. Bibliometrics is one of the sub-fields concerned with measuring the output of scientific publications. Bibliometrics ows its systematic development mainly to the works of its founders V V Naliv, D J D Price and Eugene Garfield in the 1950s. Since 1958 Bibliometrics has evolved as a field, taught in library and information science schools and it emerged as a tool for scientific evaluation for a number research groups around the world. This process was made possible by the work of Eugene Garfield and his Science Citation Index. Castell, an American psychologist was credited with the launching of Scientometrics, when he produced statistics on a number of scientists and their geographical distribution, and ranked the scientists according to their performance. He introduced two dimensions into the measurements of science, namely, quantity and quality. The term informertics was introduced by Blackert, Siegel and Nacke(1979) but gained popularity by the launch of the international informetrics conferences in 1987. A recent development in informetrics called the webometrics/cybermetrics, has become a part of the main stream library and information science research area. The term webometrics refers to the quantitative studies of the nature of scientific communication over the internet and its impact on diffusion of ideas and information. This paper reviews the evolution of bibliometrics and its fast growing offshoots, scientometrics, informaetrics and webometrics.