AbstractsComputer Science

The purpose of this research is to investigate whether the mathematical discipline of graph theory is applicable to the analysis of citation indexing, and if it is applicable to identify the areas and perform a graph theory analysis. This paper, therefore, presents a mathematical notation based on that conventionally used in graph theory, and then applies the notation to the many aspects of citation indexing discussed in the literature. The motivation for this work is the belief that a mathematical notation will permit a clear statement of the problems associated with citation indexing and will consequently facilitate needed solutions. Moreover, it is believed that a mathematical notation can be beneficially used when discussing citation indexing structures so as to permit non-ambiguous communication among researcher, system designer, programmer, and users of citation index data. The notation presented here will afford definitions of the input, output, and processing problems associated with the computer manipulation of citation index data. Additionally, this notation will facilitate a detailed and exact discussion of the use of citation data for socio-historical analysis.