Benford’s Law and articles of scientific journals: comparison of JCR® and Scopus data

Abstract

Benford’s Law is a logarithmic probability distribution function used to predict the distribution of the first significant digits in numerical data. This paper presents the results of a study of the distribution of the first significant digits of the number of articles published of journals indexed in the JCR® Sciences and Social Sciences Editions from 2007 to 2011. The data of these journals were also analyzed by the country of origin and the journal’s category. Results considering the number of articles published informed by Scopus are also presented. Comparing the results we observe that there is a significant difference in the data informed in the two databases.

Beyond Benford's Law: Distinguishing Noise from Chaos

“…although there is no accepted interpretation, BL is nearly taken as an universal law. In recent years, most BL related studies are limited in validating whether particular datasets follow this law [ 29 , 30 ], detecting frauds in election and accounting [ 31 , 32 ], as well as testing physical system transition [ 33 , 34 ]. Especially, Tolle and his coauthors [ 35 ] examined three low-dimensional chaotic models of dynamical systems, and found examples of either compliance with or deviance from Benford's law, which depends upon the models and the parameters.…”

A novel method of stylometry based on the statistic of numerals

“…Несмотря на неполноту объяснения, закон Бенфорда успешно применяется для выявления подлогов в бухгалтерской отчетности [Nigrini, 2012] и фальсификаций на выборах [Battersby, 2009]; обсуждается применение в различных областях науки, в качестве иллюстрации укажем работы, связанные с физикой и астрономией [Pain, 2013;Biau, 2015;Hill, Fox, 2016], сейсмоло-гией [Sambridge et al, 2011], стеганографией [Andriotis et al, 2013], наукометрией [Alves et al, 2014].…”

A New Stylometry Method Basing on the Numerals Statistic

“…Incomplete understanding [3] does not preclude the successful use of Benford's law to detecting fraud in accounting and auditing data [4] and election fraud [5]; the applications suggested extend from physics and astronomy [6,7] through seismology [8] to steganography [9] and scientometrics [10].…”