Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy applied to iMetrics: Scientometrics, Journal of Informetrics, and a relevant subset of JASIST

• Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS) is used to show the historical origins of iMetrics (information metrics, bibliometrics, and scientometrics) in scholarly literature.
• Whereas Lotka (1926) is indicated as the first source, the intellectual program of iMetrics was shaped only in the early 1960s.
• The Journal of Informetrics has bridged research traditions in quantitative science studies (Scientometrics) and the information sciences (JASIST).
• RPYS is routinized and a program is made available at the Internet (at http://www.leydesdorff.net/software/rpys).

We have developed a (freeware) routine for “Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy” (RPYS) and apply this method to the historiography of “iMetrics,” that is, the junction of the journals Scientometrics, Informetrics, and the relevant subset of JASIST (approx. 20%) that shapes the intellectual space for the development of information metrics (bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, and webometrics). The application to information metrics (our own field of research) provides us with the opportunity to validate this methodology, and to add a reflection about using citations for the historical reconstruction. The results show that the field is rooted in individual contributions of the 1920s to 1950s (e.g., Alfred J. Lotka), and was then shaped intellectually in the early 1960s by a confluence of the history of science (Derek de Solla Price), documentation (e.g., Michael M. Kessler's “bibliographic coupling”), and “citation indexing” (Eugene Garfield). Institutional development at the interfaces between science studies and information science has been reinforced by the new journal Informetrics since 2007. In a concluding reflection, we return to the question of how the historiography of science using algorithmic means—in terms of citation practices—can be different from an intellectual history of the field based, for example, on reading source materials.