This chapter provides a conceptual scope of informetrics by defining the concept and demonstrating its relationship with bibliometrics, scientometrics, webometrics, cybermetrics, and altmetrics. It demonstrates that informetrics is a quantitative research design that assumes a realistic ontology and objectivism as the epistemological perspective. Based on the data that was extracted from Scopus as well as a content review of selected calls for papers, the chapter highligts methods and areas of informetrics research as reflected in the literature that was published in the subject domain and its sub-domains between 1991 and 2018. The author-supplied keywords, which were the items of analysis, yielded 96 interconnected research methods and 361 areas in which informetrics research can be applied or undertaken. Finally, the chapter provides informetrics students and developing researchers with an outline of the elements that would constitute their research proposals and research methodology chapters of their theses and dissertations.
TopInformetrics constitutes all quantitative measures of “patterns that show up not only in publications but also in many aspects of life, as long as the patterns deal with information” (Diodato 1994, p. ix). Hood and Wilson (2001, p. 294) observe that the term “comes from the German term ‘informetrie’ and was first proposed in 1979 by Nacke to cover that part of information science dealing with the measurement of information phenomena and the application of mathematical methods to the discipline’s problems, to bibliometrics and parts of information retrieval theory, and perhaps more widely”.
According to Egghe and Rousseau (1990, p. 1), informetrics deals with the measurement, mathematical theory and modeling of all aspects of information. The authors argue that informetrics largely “borrows tools (techniques, models, analogues) from mathematics, physics, computer science and other metrics”. Informetrics is an umbrella term that encompasses bibliometrics, scientometrics, webometrics, cybermetrics and altmetrics (Björneborn & Ingwersen, 2004; Onyancha, 2014). Onyancha’s (2014) graphical representation of the relationship between the aforementioned concepts, as shown in Figure 1, is an adaptation of Björneborn and Ingwersen’s (2004) illustration.
Figure 1. Overlaps between informetrics, bibliometrics, scientometrics, cybermetrics webometrics, and altmetrics (Source: Onyancha, 2014, p. 51)
Figure 1 demonstrates the distinct but intertwined and overlapping relationships among the concepts. It is not therefore uncommon to witness the interchangeable and synonymous usage of two or more of the concepts in literature. The concepts, however, have unique applications as exemplified in their definitions.