Lotka´s law and the literature of computer science

From empirical data on the authorship of scientific papers, Alfred Lotka deduced on inverse-square law relating the number of authors of scientific papers to the number of papers written by each author. A basic assumption underlying Lotka´s law is that the number of papers published by a scientist is a measure of his contribution to science. This assumption is debatable. In this paper Lotka´s law is applied to the literature of computer science. The inconsistent results of earlier attempts to apply Lotka´s law to the literature of various scientific disciplines, including computer science, are ascribed to the differences in sampling procedure and treatment of multiple authorship.