Web informetrics: extending classical informetrics to the Web

Abstract

We explore the extension of classical informetric theory to the WWW. From the power law distribution of Web page degrees, we derived other interesting laws that hold for the Web such as Mandelbrot's law, Leimkuhler's law and Bradford's law. We introduced the theory of information producing processes that serves as a generic framework for studying the interrelationships between these informetric regularities. The theory of informetrics leads to a repertoire of metrics for measuring the scale of concentration that can be applied to the WWW.