Application of Bradford’s Law to Human-Computer Interaction Research Literature

Bradford’s law is about scattering of literature in different information sources on a narrow subject. The present study serves as a test of the two formulations of Bradford’s law, verbal and graphical, using 137120 articles published on Human-computer interaction (HCI) research in the journals index in Science Citation Index-Expanded during 1987-2011. The data is divided into five five-year spans so that comparisons can be made between the percentage errors for each five-year period. List of the core journals is also prepared for all the five blocks of five-year period. Number of journals and their titles in the core group indicates continuous change in focus in HCI research from one five-year block to the next. In addition, the applicability of Leimkuhler model was also tested with the present data. Neither the verbal nor the graphical formulation provides results that are consistent with the practical situation.