Scientometrics (2016) 106:1117–1133

DOI 10.1007/s11192-016-1838-0

Influence of the principle of least effort across disciplines

Yu-Wei Chang1

Received: 3 August 2015 / Published online: 25 January 2016

Ó Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2016

Abstract This study investigated the influence of the principle of least effort (PLE)
introduced by Zipf in his 1949 work, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort:
An Introduction to Human Ecology. The influence of the PLE was measured by examining
articles across various disciplines published between 1950 and 2013 that cited Zipf’s
original work. Our findings show that Zipf’s law was the most influential concept
embedded in the original work, with the PLE being the second most cited concept.
Although the PLE was the focus of Zipf’s 1949 book, its influence was much lower than
that of Zipf’s law. Furthermore, Zipf’s law showed an increasing influence over time,
whereas a decreasing influence was observed for the PLE. Of the 31 disciplines citing the
PLE, library and information science articles cited it most, followed by psychology arti-
cles. Articles primarily cited the PLE to explain human behavior and language use.
However, articles citing Zipf’s law focused on its formula.

Keywords Principle of least effort
Zipf’s law
Interdisciplinary influence
Citation

context analysis

Introduction

George Kingsley Zipf, an American linguist, is credited for his contributions to Zipf’s law,
which states that the frequency of words is inversely proportional to their rank determined
by frequency. The concept originated from Zipf’s 1935 book entitled The Psychobiology of
Language, and also appeared in his 1949 book, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least
Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology (HBPLE). Although the concept of Zipf’s law is

& Yu-Wei Chang

yuweichang2007@gmail.com; yuweichang2013@ntu.edu.tw
1
Department of Library and Information Science, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4,
Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan

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1118 Scientometrics (2016) 106:1117–1133

stated throughout HBPLE, Zipf’s main purpose was to advocate the concept of the prin-
ciple of least effort (PLE).
Zipf claimed that people tend to choose the way requiring the least effort to finish tasks,
and based his claim on empirical data collected from various activities. Among numerous
activities, languages were Zipf’s first and primary focus in HBPLE. Eight out of the 12
chapters of HBPLE explored language; Zipf discovered that people frequently use short
words for daily communication. The skewed frequency of each word used was revealed;
the relationship between word frequency and word rank was observed and described using
a mathematical formula now called Zipf’s law. Language use was also described using a
mathematical formula and justified by the PLE. As such, the PLE is also referred to as
Zipf’s law in some situations (Case 2005). Although the PLE can be used to explain Zipf’s
law, it was not fully developed when Zipf’s law was discussed in The Psychobiology of
Language (Chao 1950). Based on the times at which the two concepts were formed, it is
evident that the PLE was derived from Zipf’s law.
The uneven distribution highlighted by Zipf’s law has been identified in numerous
activities. Similar theories or concepts submitted by researchers in fields outside library
and information science (LIS) have been juxtaposed with the PLE, such as Mooers’s law
(Bierbaum 1990). Although some researchers have criticized the PLE as oversimplifying
human behavior, PLE is still considered an essential theory reinforced by numerous
empirical studies. In the field of LIS, the PLE has been widely applied to explain infor-
mation seeking behavior (Bigdeli 2007; Bronstein 2008; Kim 1982; Wang 2000; White
2001).
Because the PLE is a general human behavior that can be observed in numerous
activities, it is easy to understand why HBPLE is cited by researchers across various
disciplines. According to the Web of Science (WoS) database, the annual number of
citations that HBPLE receives is rising, indicating that the influence of HBPLE has not
diminished since it was published more than 66 years ago.
Classic publications are suited to long-term citation tracking because they are works
that attract researchers; their influence does not decrease even decades after publication.
Studies have shown that the main concepts embedded in a publication are cited more
frequently than other minor concepts (Chang 2013b; McCain and Salvucci 2006).

Hypothesis and objectives

This study explored the disciplines of researchers that cite HBPLE for the PLE, to clarify
the interdisciplinary influence of the concept. The focus of this study was to observe the
changes in the influence of the PLE contained in the original work, and not to analyze all
citations of the PLE. Because the PLE is the core of HBPLE, we assumed that it would
have the greatest influence among all concepts in HBPLE. Publications tend to cite liter-
ature in their own specific discipline (Chang 2013a; Richard and Pysek 2008); because
HBPLE is a linguistics book, we assumed that the PLE was most cited by authors of
linguistics articles. However, these assumptions required examination. To verify the
assumptions, the differences in the influence of articles citing HBPLE were explored and
compared among disciplines. Other influential concepts embedded in HBPLE were also
identified. In addition, the changes in influence of concepts embedded in HBPLE were
tracked. These findings contribute to understanding the trend in the influence of the PLE
originating from Zipf’s 1949 work.

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Literature review

Classic works exist in all disciplines and play a key role in supporting professional
development. Ideas claimed by the authors of classic works constantly receive citations,
revealing that classic publications have a greater influence than other publications.
Numerous studies focusing on the influence of publications have counted only the number
of citations received by classic publications. Some studies have observed the changes in the
number of citations that a specific publication received during a specific period (Haas et al.
2007; Moscovitz 2014). Other studies have compared the changes in the annual number of
citations received by various publications and have identified the publications with the
greatest influence (Cohn 2011; Costanza et al. 2004; Podsakoff et al. 2005; Porta et al.
2013). Citation analyses are limited to examining whether a publication has an increasing
influence or identifying the most influential publications. To identify influential concepts
embedded in publications, some researchers have adopted the content analysis technique of
citation context analysis. However, because citation context analysis is laborious, the
number of studies using this technique is limited.
Coleman and Salamon (1988) focused on the influence of Kuhn’s The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions on the psychology literature. They classified articles citing Kuhn’s
book into four groups based on their level of agreement with Kuhn’s ideas. McCain and
Salvucci (2006) reported the influence of The Mythical Man-Month, a 1975 book by
Brooks on managing software programs. They found that citations of the concepts in the
book were spread across disciplines over time. Articles on ‘‘software engineering’’ and
‘‘computer science except software engineering’’ cited Brooks the most. Among the 14
concepts identified, Brooks’ law, the focus of the book, was the most influential for most
citations. Anderson (2006) investigated which concepts from Weick’s classic book, The
Social Psychology of Organizing, were cited by journal articles. The 12 most frequently
cited concepts in the book were identified. Anderson also compared the changes in the
number of citations to the 12 most frequently cited concepts in US and European journal
articles. Richard and Pysek (2008) examined the influence of Elton’s book, The Ecology of
Invasion by Animals and Plants. Based on 100 randomly selected papers published
between 1960 and 2006, 14 cited topics were identified and the changes in the citation
percentages for each topic across four decades were compared. Elton’s book was mainly
cited as a fundamental concept source. Thomaz et al. (2010) investigated the influence of
Hutchinson’s 1959 paper, ‘‘Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why Are There So Many Kinds of
Animals?’’ on aquatic ecology research. Chang (2013a) identified the core concepts and the
changes in the influence of cited concepts contained in Taylor’s 1968 article, ‘‘Question-
Negotiation and Information Seeking in Libraries.’’ Chang (2013b) compared the differ-
ences in citation contexts between the natural sciences and the social sciences and
humanities, on the basis of articles published between 1963 and 2010 citing de Solla
Price’s book, Little Science, Big Science. Eleven cited concepts and 11 citation functions
were identified. De Solla Price’s book was frequently cited as a source relating to a specific
topic and as evidence to support a claim. Burton-Jones (2014) identified that the theory
developed in Zuboff’s book, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and
Power, was not frequently cited in the field of information systems.

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Methodology

Data collection

To determine whether the PLE embedded in HBPLE is cited by researchers representing

various disciplines, we first identified the articles citing HBPLE. HBPLE was published in
1949 and was reprinted in 1956, 1972, and 2012; therefore, articles citing HBPLE pub-
lished in those 4 years were collected. On May 30, 2014, we used the WoS, an interdis-
ciplinary citation index database with long-term retrospective data, to retrieve the
bibliographic records of articles citing HBPLE published between 1949 and 2013. The
WoS indexed various types of documents; however, because each type possessed different
characteristics, this study analyzed only research articles, labeled as ‘‘article’’ in the WoS.
In addition, the study included only articles written in English. The initial search results
generated 2491 bibliographic records for research articles, which accounted for approxi-
mately 91 % of all bibliographic records referring to HBPLE. Before the citation context
analysis, we examined the in-text citations of these 2491 research articles to ensure that the
authors had cited HBPLE. Of the 2491 citing articles, 72 were excluded from the dataset
because of citation errors or because the full-text articles could not be obtained. As such,
we finally analyzed 2419 citing articles.

Classifying articles by discipline

The articles citing HBPLE represented various disciplines. The disciplinary attribute of an
article was assigned according to the subject category of the journal in which the article
was published. For example, articles published in computer science journals were classified
as computer science articles. The subject categories were developed on the basis of the 21
fields of journals indexed by the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database. Except for
‘‘business,’’ ‘‘management,’’ and ‘‘general social sciences,’’ the other 18 fields belong to
the natural sciences. Because numerous disciplines are incorporated into the single field of
‘‘general social sciences,’’ certain disciplines within the social sciences were identified
according to the journal subject categories in the WoS. For a journal not included in the
ESI, its WoS subject category was mapped to a field listed in the ESI. A total of 40
disciplines were identified.

Identifying the concepts cited

Using the full text of articles, in-text citations related to HBPLE were identified. The text
surrounding each in-text citation related to HBPLE was read to extract the specific concept

Table 1 Example of citation contexts in an article referring to HBPLE

Introduction
The American philologist George Kingsley Zipf (1935, 1949) became famous for observing that word
frequencies, in a corpus, fall off inversely with word-frequency rank according to a simple power.
Although Zipf’s law has lost much of its luster as a ‘‘deep law of natural language’’ (Miller et al. 1957;
Li 1992), it has reappeared as a frequency rank relationship in other, more profound, context. Examples
include page hits observed at web sites (Huberman et al. 1998), the sizes of cities (Zipf 1949; Marsili
and Zhang 1998), and the annual incomes of companies (Okuyama et al. 1999)

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embedded in HBPLE that was cited. A citing article contained at least one in-text citation.
Each in-text citation was an independent citation context for analyzing a specific cited
concept embedded in HBPLE. For example, Table 1 shows the full text of an entire
paragraph from an article written by Kot et al. (2003, p. 247), which contains two citation
contexts referring to HBPLE. The first citation context is in line 1 of the paragraph, and the
second citation context is in line 6. The specific concept manually extracted for the two
citation contexts was the same, Zipf’s law.
HBPLE received 3017 in-text citations contained in 2419 articles. Of these articles,
84.1 % had only one citation context referring to HBPLE. The recorded contents of each
in-text citation relating to HBPLE included two parts: a specific concept embedded in
HBPLE, and whether the authors used the same terms as those used by Zipf. For example,
some authors used the term ‘‘skewed distribution’’ or ‘‘Zipf distribution’’ to represent
‘‘Zipf’s law’’ used by Zipf. The cited content referring to HBPLE was grouped into several
concept categories.

Results

Trends in the annual number of citing articles

HBPLE was cited as soon as 1 year after its publication in 1949. Figure 1 shows the annual
number of articles citing HBPLE from 1950 to 2013. An increasing trend in the annual
number of citing articles was observed, indicating that HBPLE’s influence expanded over
time, confirming HBPLE as a classic work. During this period, the annual number of citing
articles ranged from 1 to 148, with an average of 38 citations per year. The number of
citing articles did not become substantial until 2001, and a spike of citing articles appeared
in 2012. Before 2001, the number of citing articles was \60. Between 2001 and 2013, a
rapid increase was observed in the number of citing articles, showing that HBPLE’s
influence had entered a growth stage.

Fig. 1 Number of articles citing HBPLE by year

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 No. of articles No. of articles No. of articles No. of articles No. of articles
1122

0
0

10
20
30
40
50
10
20
30
40
50
0
10
20
30
40
50
0
10
20
30
40
50

0
10
20
30
40
50
1950 1950 1950 1950 1950
1953 1953 1953 1953 1953

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1956 1956 1956 1956 1956
1959 1959 1959 1959 1959
1962 1962 1962 1962 1962
1965 1965 1965 1965 1965
1968 1968 1968 1968 1968
1971 1971 1971 1971 1971
1974 1974 1974 1974 1974
1977 1977 1977 1977 1977
1980 1980 1980 1980 1980
1983 1983

LIS
1983 1983 1983

Math
1986 1986 1986 1986 1986

Business
1989 1989 1989 1989 1989
1992 1992 1992 1992 1992
1995 1995 1995 1995 1995
Computer science

1998 1998 1998 1998 1998

Environmental science
2001 2001 2001 2001 2001
2004 2004 2004 2004 2004
2007 2007 2007 2007 2007
2010 2010 2010 2010 2010
2013 2013 2013 2013 2013

No. of articles No. of articles No. of articles No. of articles No. of articles

0
10
20
30
40
50
0

0
0
10
20
30
40
50

10
20
30
40
50
10
20
30
40
50
0
10
20
30
40
50

1950 1950 1950 1950 1950

Fig. 2 Annual number of articles citing HBPLE in 10 disciplines

1953 1953 1953 1953 1953
1956 1956 1956 1956 1956
1959 1959 1959 1959 1959
1962 1962 1962 1962 1962
1965 1965 1965 1965 1965
1968 1968 1968 1968 1968
1971 1971 1971 1971 1971
1974 1974 1974 1974 1974
1977 1977 1977 1977 1977
1980 1980 1980 1980 1980
1983 1983 1983 1983 1983
1986 1986 1986 1986 1986
Physics

1989 1989 1989 1989 1989

Linguistics
Psychology

Engineering

1992 1992 1992 1992 1992

Multidiscipline
1995 1995 1995 1995 1995
1998 1998 1998 1998 1998
2001 2001 2001 2001 2001
2004 2004 2004 2004 2004
2007 2007 2007 2007 2007
2010 2010 2010 2010 2010
2013 2013 2013 2013 2013
Scientometrics (2016) 106:1117–1133
Scientometrics (2016) 106:1117–1133 1123

Fig. 3 Number of disciplines for articles citing HBPLE by year

Disciplines of citing articles

Table 2 shows that the 2419 citing articles originated from 40 disciplines. HBPLE has
proven to have an interdisciplinary influence. The number of citing articles published in
computer science journals accounted for the largest portion (20.8 %), followed by physics
(15.3 %), and LIS (10.7 %); thus, 46.8 % of the citing articles were concentrated in three
disciplines. We regarded HBPLE as a book about linguistics because Zipf was a linguistic
expert; therefore, we assumed that HBPLE would be most frequently cited by authors of
linguistics articles because numerous studies have shown that publications in a specific
field are mainly cited by researchers in that field (Chan et al. 2013; Huang and Chang 2012;
Ortega and Antell 2006). However, Table 2 shows that articles in nine disciplines cited
HBPLE more frequently than did linguistics articles. Therefore, we further compared the
differences in the influence of HBPLE among the 10 disciplines with the most citing
articles. Figure 2 shows the trend in the annual number of articles citing HBPLE in the top
10 disciplines. Changes in the annual number of citing articles were divided into three
types. Type 1 contained the top two disciplines of computer science and physics, showing
an obvious upward trend in the 2000s; however, physics articles were concentrated in the
period between 1989 and 2013. Type 2 contained only LIS, demonstrating a gradual and
slight increasing trend in the annual number of citing articles. Type 3 contained the seven
remaining disciplines, which featured a slight increasing trend at the end of the study
period.
After dividing the 40 disciplines into three broad fields, namely the natural sciences,
social sciences, and arts and humanities, the natural sciences was the largest group with 18
disciplines, followed closely by the social sciences with 16 disciplines. Only six disciplines
belonged to the arts and humanities. Although the number of disciplines within the natural
and social sciences were nearly equal, a major difference in the number of citing articles
was observed. Natural science articles dominated with 1531 articles (63.3 %), which is
much larger than the number of social science (866 articles, 35.8 %) or arts and humanities
(22 articles, 0.9 %) articles citing HBPLE.
Figure 3 shows the changes in the annual number of disciplines citing HBPLE, ranging
between 1 and 27. An increasing trend was confirmed, indicating that HBPLE influenced
more disciplines over time. Thus, the interdisciplinary visibility of HBPLE increased.
Table 3 reveals the first year a specific discipline cited HBPLE. Articles in business,
medicine, physics, and psychology cited HBPLE from 1950, whereas an article in

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Table 2 Discipline distribution of citing articles

No. Discipline No. of citing articles Percentage

1 Computer science 503 20.8

2 Physics 370 15.3
3 LISa 260 10.7
4 Psychologya 157 6.5
5 Environmental science 155 6.4
6 Engineering 144 6.0
7 Businessa 127 5.3
8 Multiscience 95 3.9
9 Mathematics 88 3.6
10 Linguisticsa 82 3.4
11 Geographya 53 2.2
12 Sociologya 48 2.0
13 Anthropologya 48 2.0
14 Biology 46 1.9
15 Political sciencea 25 1.0
16 Medicine 23 1.0
17 Geosciences 22 0.9
18 General sciences 20 0.8
19 General social sciencesa 18 0.7
20 Chemistry 15 0.6
21 Plant and animal science 17 0.7
22 Communicationa 12 0.5
23 Educationa 10 0.4
24 Neuroscience 10 0.4
25 Criminologya 9 0.4
26 Astronomy and astrophysics 8 0.3
27 Molecular science 8 0.3
28 Literatureb 7 0.3
29 Demographya 6 0.2
30 Lawa 6 0.2
31 General arts and humanitiesb 4 0.2
32 Historyb 4 0.2
33 Physiology 4 0.2
34 Musicb 4 0.2
35 Transportationa 3 0.1
36 Material science 2 0.1
37 Area studiesa 2 0.1
38 Philosophyb 2 0.1
39 Agricultural science 1 0.0
40 Architectureb 1 0.0
2419 100.0
a
Indicates the social sciences
b
Indicates the arts and humanities

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Table 3 First year HBPLE was cited by an article of a specific discipline

Year Discipline Year Discipline

1950 Business; medicine; physics; psychology 1982 Plant and animal science
1951 Engineering 1983 Education
1952 Environmental science 1984 Biology
1953 Mathmatics 1985 General arts and humanities;
Neuroscience
1954 1986
1955 Computer science 1987 Criminology; Political science
1956 Anthropology 1988
1957 Demography; linguistics; molecular science; 1989
multiscience; sociology
1958 Communication; geography; LIS; philosophy 1990
1959 1991 History
1960 Transportation 1992
1961 1993
1962 1994
1963 General social sciences 1995 Literature
1964 1996
1965 1997
1966 1998
1967 Law 1999
1968 2000 Astronomy and astrophysics
1969 General sciences; geosciences 2001 Material science
1970 2002
1971 2003
1972 2004
1973 2005 Music
1974 Area studies 2006
1975 Chemistry 2007
1976 2008
1977 Physiology 2009
1978 2010
1979 2011 Architecture
1980 2012 Agricultural science
1981 2013

agricultural science first cited HBPLE in 2012. Articles in more than half the disciplines
started to cite HBPLE before 1970.

Cited concepts

Table 4 shows eight categories of cited concepts extracted from 3017 citation contexts.
‘‘Zipf’s law’’ was the most cited concept (73.4 %), followed by ‘‘PLE’’ (11.8 %). ‘‘Zipf’s
studies’’ was the third most cited concept (10.0 %), referring to studies conducted by Zipf,
not emphasizing Zipf’s law. The five remaining categories of concepts accounted for

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Table 4 Distribution of cited concepts

Cited No. citation % Natural sciences Social sciences Arts and humanities
concepts contexts
No. citation % No. citation % No. citation %
contexts contexts contexts

Zipf’s law 2213 73.4 1507 80.5 624 59.5 19 57.6

PLE 356 11.8 126 6.7 224 21.4 6 18.2
Zipf’s studies 302 10.0 154 8.2 140 13.4 8 24.2
HBPLE 65 2.2 29 1.5 36 3.4 0 0.0
Zipf’s 50 1.7 45 2.4 5 0.5 0 0.0
analysis
Pareto_law 16 0.5 8 0.4 8 0.8 0 0.0
Other 10 0.3 3 0.2 7 0.7 0 0.0
Oral_behavior 5 0.2 1 0.1 4 0.4 0 0.0
Total 3017 100.0 1873 100.0 1048 100.0 33 100.0

approximately 4.8 % of cited concepts. ‘‘HBPLE’’ refers to the title of Zipf’s 1949 book,
without referring to the content. ‘‘Zipf analysis’’ refers to the methods Zipf used to
determine the ranking of observed subjects, which was adopted by authors for processing
data in their studies. ‘‘Pareto law’’ refers to another law widely used to describe the
phenomenon of uneven distribution (e.g., the distribution of income). Because the Pareto
law was not formulated by Zipf, citations of this concept revealed that some authors do not
cite the work in which a concept was originated. A similar situation was found for the cited
concept of ‘‘oral behavior,’’ referring to the language learning ability. The remaining 10
citation contexts represented various concepts and were combined into the category of
‘‘other’’ because of their low number.
We compared the differences in cited concepts among three broad fields: the natural
sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Table 3 shows that ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ was the
most cited concept by articles in all three fields. ‘‘PLE’’ was the second most cited concept
in social science articles and the third most cited concept in articles of natural sciences and
arts and humanities. In addition, most citation contexts relating to ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ (1507
citation contexts) were made in natural science articles, whereas most citation contexts
relating to PLE originated in social science articles (224 citation contexts).
We further explored five cited concepts by tracking their changes in annual influence.
The remaining three cited concepts, each with a marginal number of citation contexts, were
neglected because no clear trends were observed. Figure 4 shows an increasing trend for
‘‘Zipf’s law’’ and decreasing trends for ‘‘PLE’’ and ‘‘Zipf’s studies,’’ with the discrepancy
expanding since 1974. This confirms that Zipf’s law was the concept with the greatest
influence. ‘‘PLE,’’ the focus of HBPLE, showed a decreasing influence. A decreasing
influence was also identified for ‘‘HBPLE’’ and ‘‘Zipf’s analysis.’’

Influence of the PLE

The PLE is derived from Zipf’s law, and the two terms are interchangeable in some
contexts. Because of this association, we observed and compared the influence of the two
cited concepts according to the number of citation contexts each received during the study

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Fig. 4 Changes in the annual percentages of five main cited concepts

period. Table 5 shows that ‘‘PLE’’ was cited most by articles from 31 disciplines. Citation
contexts from articles in LIS accounted for the largest portion (74 citation contexts,
20.8 %), followed by articles in psychology (39 citation contexts, 11.0 %). Citation con-
texts from linguistics articles ranked fifth (22 citation contexts, 6.2 %). In addition, the
articles of only four disciplines, namely criminology, general arts and humanities, law, and
political science, cited ‘‘PLE’’ most. ‘‘PLE’’ was the second most cited concept in 15
disciplines, the third most cited concept in 10 disciplines, the fourth most cited concept in 1
discipline, and the fifth most cited concept in 1 discipline. The concept of ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ was
cited by articles in 38 disciplines and was the most cited concept in 36 disciplines, with the
exception of political science and general arts and humanities. Computer science articles
accounted for the largest part of all citation contexts referring to ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ (549 citation
contexts, 24.8 %), followed by physics articles (388 citation contexts, or 17.5 %) and
articles in LIS (196 citation contexts, 8.9 %).
Figure 5 shows the annual cumulative percentage for ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ and ‘‘PLE.’’
Comparing the years in which the cumulative percentage reached 50 %, the half-life value
of ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ was slightly larger than that of ‘‘PLE’’ (55 vs. 53 years). A longer half-life
indicates a slower rate of obsolescence; thus, ‘‘PLE’’ had a faster obsolescence rate than
‘‘Zipf’s law.’’ In particular, ‘‘PLE’’ had a higher growth rate in citation contexts than
‘‘Zipf’s law’’ between 1992 and 2004.
Because of the large amount of citation contexts for ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ and ‘‘PLE,’’ we
further divided the contexts into several citation purpose groups. Figure 6 shows four
purposes for which authors cited the concept of ‘‘Zipf’s law.’’ ‘‘Formula,’’ which refers to
the formula of Zipf’s law, dominated in most years between 1950 and 2013. ‘‘Uneven
distribution,’’ which refers to the phenomenon reflected in Zipf’s law, was the second most
cited purpose. ‘‘Term’’ means that authors only mentioned the name of Zipf’s law, without
referring to its content. ‘‘Other’’ refers to other citation purposes.
Figure 7 shows the remaining five purposes for which authors cited the concept of
‘‘PLE.’’ ‘‘Application’’ was the primary purpose, which means that authors applied the

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Table 5 Percentage of citation contexts referring to ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ and ‘‘PLE’’ by discipline
No. Discipline PLE Zipf’s law
a b
No. citation % % Rank No. citation % %c Rankd
contexts contexts

1 LIS 74 20.8 23.8 2 196 8.9 63.0 1

2 Psychology 39 11.0 20.0 2 112 5.1 57.4 1
3 Computer science 27 7.6 4.6 2 549 24.8 92.6 1
4 Environmental 25 7.0 12.7 2 142 6.4 72.1 1
science
5 Linguistics 22 6.2 23.2 2 66 3.0 69.5 1
6 Business 21 5.9 13.4 3 105 4.7 66.9 1
7 Anthropology 18 5.1 31.0 2 30 1.4 51.7 1
8 Engineering 17 4.8 9.5 2 154 7.0 86.0 1
9 Physics 14 3.9 2.9 3 388 17.5 80.8 1
10 Medicine 12 3.4 42.9 2 13 0.6 46.4 1
11 Multiscience 12 3.4 8.8 3 93 4.2 68.4 1
12 Sociology 11 3.1 17.5 3 28 1.3 44.4 1
13 Geography 10 2.8 16.1 3 33 1.5 53.2 1
14 Criminology 9 2.5 100.0 1 0
15 Political science 9 2.5 34.6 1 7 0.3 26.9 2
16 Mathematics 6 1.7 4.7 3 92 4.2 72.4 1
17 Communication 5 1.4 29.4 2 11 0.5 64.7 1
18 Plant and animal 4 1.1 12.5 3 20 0.9 62.5 1
sciences
19 General arts and 3 0.8 60.0 1 2 0.1 40.0 2
humanities
20 Law 2 0.6 28.6 1 2 0.1 28.6 1
21 Neuroscience 2 0.6 18.2 2 8 0.4 72.7 1
22 Literature 2 0.6 18.2 3 6 0.3 54.6 1
23 Education 2 0.6 16.7 2 9 0.4 75.0 1
24 General social 2 0.6 8.0 3 19 0.9 76.0 1
sciences
25 Biology 2 0.6 0.4 4 42 1.9 76.4 1
26 History 1 0.3 25.0 2 1 0.0 25.0 2
27 Physiology 1 0.3 20.0 2 2 0.1 40.0 1
28 Astronomy and 1 0.3 10.0 2 6 0.3 60.0 1
astrophysics
29 General sciences 1 0.3 4.8 3 14 0.6 66.7 1
30 Chemistry 1 0.3 4.4 3 20 0.9 87.0 1
31 Geoscience 1 0.3 0.4 5 16 0.7 61.5 1
32 Agricultural science 0 1 0.0 100.0 1
33 Material science 0 2 0.1 100.0 1
34 Architecture 0 1 0.0 100.0 1
35 Molecular science 0 8 0.4 80.0 1
36 Music 0 8 0.4 80.0 1
37 Transportation 0 2 0.1 66.7 1

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Table 5 continued

No. Discipline PLE Zipf’s law

a b
No. citation % % Rank No. citation % %c Rankd
contexts contexts

38 Demography 0 3 0.1 50.0 1

39 Area studies 0 1 0.0 50.0 1
40 Philosophy 0 1 0.0 50.0 1
356 100.0 2213 100.0
a
This is the percentage of citation contexts from a specific discipline referring to PLE
b
This is the rank resulting from the number of citation contexts from a specific discipline referring to PLE
c
This is the percentage of citation contexts from a specific discipline referring to Zipf’s law
d
This is the rank resulting from the number of citation contexts from a specific discipline referring to Zipf’s
law

Fig. 5 Cumulative percentage of citation contexts referring to Zipf’s law and the PLE

principle to various human activities. Most authors used the PLE to explain human
information behavior and language use. ‘‘Definition’’ refers to the definition of the PLE.
‘‘Comparison’’ refers to a comparison of the PLE with other similar theories or laws.
‘‘Based on’’ refers to the fact that the PLE is derived from Zipf’s law. ‘‘Other’’ refers other
citation purposes.

Discussion

PLE is a widely known information theory in the field of LIS. However, PLE originates in
the field of linguistics, which is the main concept outlined by Zipf in HBPLE. Zipf believed
that PLE is ubiquitous in daily human behavior and proved its existence by using numerous
empirical studies. This study confirmed the interdisciplinary influence of HBPLE on the
basis of articles from 40 disciplines citing HBPLE between 1950 and 2013. The increase in
the annual number of disciplines citing HBPLE demonstrates that HBPLE has continued to

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Fig. 6 Changes in the number of citation contexts referring to Zipf’s law, by citation purpose

Fig. 7 Changes in the number of citation contexts referring to PLE, by citation purpose

enlarge its interdisciplinary influence. In addition, an increasing trend in the number of

citations shows that HBPLE is a classic work with a long-term influence.
HBPLE is a book on linguistics; therefore, we hypothesized that linguistics articles
would most frequently cite HBPLE. However, the results indicated that linguistics articles
citing HBPLE ranked tenth among the disciplines examined. The nine disciplines citing
HBPLE more frequently than did linguistics articles were computer science, physics, LIS,
psychology, environmental science, engineering, business, multiscience, and mathematics;
most of these nine disciplines belong to the natural sciences. The citing articles in com-
puter science accounted for the largest group (20.8 %), followed by articles in physics
(15.3 %) and LIS (10.7 %). Linguistics articles only accounted for 3.6 % of all articles
citing HBPLE. This is inconsistent with studies showing that articles tend to cite studies in
their own specific discipline (Chang 2013a; McCain and Salvucci 2006; Richard and Pysek

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2008). In addition, the number of citing articles for 24 disciplines accounted for \1 % of
all citing articles. This indicated that HBPLE had a marginal influence on most disciplines.
The uneven distribution of disciplines in this study is also an example of Zipf distribution.
After exploring the concepts in HBPLE cited by researchers, ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ was iden-
tified as the most highly cited concept (73.4 % of citation contexts), followed by ‘‘PLE’’
(11.8 %). Although ‘‘PLE’’ was the second most cited concept, a great discrepancy was
observed in the number of citation contexts between ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ and ‘‘PLE.’’ This
indicates that ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ had a higher visibility than ‘‘PLE.’’ Zipf’s law also appears in
Zipf’s 1935 book; however, according to the WoS database, this book is not frequently
cited. This indicates that the concept of Zipf’s law did not receive much attention until
1949. One possible explanation for this is that researchers could not obtain Zipf’s 1935
book, which was published much earlier than HBPLE.
The results also showed that 36 out of 40 disciplines most cited ‘‘Zipf’s law,’’ indicating
that researchers in most disciplines were interested in Zipf’s law. In particular, the formula
for Zipf’s law was the focus. This confirms the results that most citation contexts referring
to ‘‘Zipf’s law’’ originated from articles in the natural sciences, because natural science
researchers emphasize formulas more than researchers in the social sciences and human-
ities. ‘‘PLE’’ was the second most cited concept but showed a decreasing trend in the
annual number of citation contexts; it was evident that ‘‘PLE’’ could not match ‘‘Zipf’s
law’’ as a focus concept. ‘‘PLE’’ was cited most by LIS articles, and not linguistics articles;
this is consistent with Burton-Jones (2014), who found that a focus concept was not most
cited by articles of the specific discipline to which it belonged.
‘‘PLE’’ was primarily cited by social science researchers to explain human behavior and
language use. It is possible that the simple meaning of the PLE led some authors to regard
the principle as common knowledge. In such cases, they would not cite HBPLE when
mentioning the PLE. We identified some articles in which the authors neither indicated the
origin of the PLE nor cited any publications mentioning the PLE (Shackleton and Prins
1992; White 2001; Wilcox 1999). The reasons for this remain unclear, but show that the
citation of literature is a complex behavior (Liu 1993).

Conclusions

The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the interdisciplinary influence
of the principle over a long period, from 1950 to 2013. The PLE is a widely known theory
originating from Zipf’s 1949 book. Zipf showed that PLE could be used to explain various
human behaviors. In this study, we observed that researchers applied the PLE to various
human activities, revealing that the principle has been widely accepted across disciplines.
A new concept typically requires time before its influence can be examined. The influence
of the PLE can now be examined because the principle has existed for more than 60 years.
Our findings show that HBPLE has a growing influence and can be qualified as a classic
work. This means that all concepts embedded in HBPLE still have an opportunity to
increase their influence. Although the PLE exhibited a decreasing influence between 1950
and 2013, we cannot predict its future influence because of the complexities in citing
literature.
The most crucial findings of this study are that the influence of the PLE was weaker than
that of Zipf’s law. Although the PLE is the focus of HBPLE, it was not the most influential
concept. In particular, the PLE made its largest contribution to LIS knowledge, and not to

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the discipline of linguistics, to which it belongs. LIS researchers primarily applied the
principle to explain information seeking behavior, making the PLE an essential theory in
the field of LIS. In addition to LIS, researchers in eight other disciplines had higher
interests in the PLE than did linguistics researchers. Furthermore, although PLE was
derived from Zipf’s law, a difference in citation purposes existed between ‘‘PLE’’ and
‘‘Zipf’s law.’’ The primary influence of Zipf’s law concentrated on its original formula,
whereas the influence of the PLE focused on explaining various human behaviors. Hence,
Zipf’s law and the PLE are treated as two different concepts by the authors citing them.
It should be noted that the influence of the PLE could be larger than is indicated in the
findings of this study. This study limited its scope to citations of the PLE originating in
HBPLE. Although an article may refer to a concept by citing other publications instead of
the original work, or even not citing a work at all, it is a difficult task to comprehensively
collect those articles.

Acknowledgments This research was supported by a Grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology
of Taiwan (MOST 103-2410-H-002-172).

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