The distribution of scientific productivity and social change

Abstract Results in the literature concerning the probability that an author publishes r articles in time t are reexamined, and it is found that a negative binomial distribution fits scientific productivity data (by the chi‐squared goodness‐of‐fit test) better than many other distributions such as geometric, logarithmic, zeta, cumulative advantage, etc. It is shown analytically that the negative binomial distribution describes a pattern of scientific productivity under the “success‐breeds‐success” condition in a wide variety of social circumstances.