Bibliometric tools

Bibliometrics is a relatively young discipline, with clear antecedents in the 1920s and a boom since the 1960s, when the name was first coined. There is a constellation of terms denoting the statistical study of (the flux of) information, most of which are used in an indiscriminate manner, as virtual synonyms. Terms such as informetrics, bibliometrics, scientometrics, webometrics, altmetrics, netometrics or cybermetrics place the focus on different approaches and/or (sub)domains of this huge research field. Thus, informetrics might be considered the umbrella term that refers to the flow of any sort of information in any mode, whereas bibliometrics restricts its interest to published information, and scientometrics focuses on the way academic/scientific information flows. Webometrics, netometrics and cybermetrics obviously study the particular conditions of exchange of information on the Internet. Altmetrics, finally, focuses on the potentialities of social media and academic social networks and tries to downplay the role played by international indexes and citation counting. Here we will use bibliometrics as our blanket term due to its focus on published information and its broad usage.