The New Metrics: From Scientometrics to Webometrics

Statistical influence was developed through the adoption of statistical laws, such as Pareto's law, with the particular aim of illustrating the exponential impacts of an emerging science. Nalimov coined the word naukometrya, translated as sciencemetrics and later as scientometrics. In fact, the objective of cartographic scientometrics is to contemplate a chronological development in order to show the trends and changes within scientific fields. The use of bibliographies may explain why it has been tempting to refer to scientific bibliometrics when studying given articles or fields of research. This chapter shows a process that combines automatic processing and human processing, which is still used in processing netometrics and Webometrics that enable URL "crawlers" to be handled, but which sometimes requires selection work carried out by humans. In traditional tools, scientometry has influenced cartographic logic as well as new software methods that seek to examine how science works and related disputes.