Application of Lotka's Law in the Field of Women's Studies Literature in India

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to know the author's productivity as measured by the application of Lotka's Law and its validity using ‘Kolmogorov-Smirnov test'. The required data (5530 articles) has been collected from 314 different journals published during 1945- 2008.Lotka's law is applied to know the number of authors contributing single paper, two papers and three papers. It has been found that 3126 (76.23%) authors have contributed only single articles. The average value of authors' productivity has been observed to be 2.61, which is higher to the inverse square value (i.e. 2) of Lotka's law. By using b = 2.61, the expected frequencies of authors were calculated. The maximum deviation (D) using Kolmogorov- Smirnov statistics test was found to be 0.01; the level of significance was calculated to be 0.0254. Here, D < 0.0254, upholds the applicability of Lotka's Law to the data of the present study.