Expansion of the field of informetrics: The second special issue

摘要

This special issue is the second one on the broad topic "informetrics", the first one being published as volume 41, Issue 6, 2005 of this journal. The reasons for publishing these special issues are explained in the editorial note Egghe (2005) and briefly summarized now. There is the fast multidisciplinary expansion (growth) of the field of informetrics, mainly due to the "new" topics that have been included in informetrics such as the quantitative study of networks, including the Internet. As a consequence, journals such as JASIST (Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology) and Scientometrics have expanded significantly in recent years (for details, see Egghe (2005) in which one can also find the references dealing with this evolution). The expansion of the field has the consequence that not only new subfields are studied (as mentioned above) but also that new tools are created such as tools based on hyperlinks and downloads. This opens entirely new informetric challenges for inventing new indicators and for their quantitative study. This requires more and more opportunities of publication outlet, whence these special issues.