Scholarly communication and bibliometrics

Why devote an ARIST chapter to scholarly communication and bibliometrics, and why now? Bibliometrics already is a frequently covered ARIST topic, with chapters such as that by White and McCain (1989) on bibliometrics generally, White and McCain (1997) on visualization of literatures, Wilson and Hood (2001) on informetric laws, and Tabah (2001) on literature dynamics. Similarly, scholarly communication has been addressed in other ARIST chapters such as Bishop and Star (1996) on social informatics and digital libraries, Schamber (1994) on relevance and information behavior, and many earlier chapters on information needs and uses. More than a decade ago, the first author addressed the intersection of scholarly communication and bibliometrics with a journal special issue and an edited book (Borgman, 1990; Borgman & Paisley, 1989), and she recently examined interim developments (Borgman, 2000a, 2000c). This review covers the decade (1990–2000) since the comprehensive 1990 volume, citing earlier works only when necessary to explain the foundation for recent developments. Given the amount of attention these topics have received, what is new and exciting enough to warrant a full chapter in 2001? What is new is that electronic scholarly communication is reaching critical mass, and CHAPTER 1