Lotka's Law and Authorship Distribution in Coronary Artery Disease Research in South Africa

TL;DR

This study examines the applicability of Lotka's Law to authorship distribution in South African coronary artery disease research, analyzing publication productivity and testing the law's fit.

Contribution

It applies Lotka's empirical law to South African CAD research publications, assessing its validity and the exponent value using statistical tests.

Findings

Lotka's Law fits the authorship distribution in the dataset

The exponent value aligns with the inverse square law

Statistical tests confirm the law's applicability

Abstract

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a major cause of death and disability in developed countries. Although CAD mortality rates worldwide have declined over the past 4 decades, CAD remains responsible for approximately one-third or more of all deaths in individuals over age 35, and it has been estimated that nearly half of all middle-aged men and one-third of middle aged women in the United States will develop clinical CAD. The present paper attempts to check the applicability of Lotka's Law on South African publication on Coronary artery disease research. The study lights on Lotka's empirical law of scientific productivity, i.e., Inverse Square Law, to measure the scientific productivity of authors, to test Lotka's Exponent value and the K.S test for the fitness of Lotka's Law.