Talk:Bradford's law

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I would argue that we do know why Zipf's law works, although the details may vary in a specific instance. Essentially Zipf applies in any system where "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." In the instance of the distribution of attention (the popular "long tail"), it has to do with the fact that the probability of my giving attention to resource X goes up with your attention to resource X.

What I can't tell from this article about Bradford is whether it really is just an example of Zipf in action. How does Bradford define "core"? Is it based on citation? Then I'd say Bradford is strictly a corollary of Zipf...