The functional relation between the impact factor and the uncitedness factor revisited

We give a heuristic proof of the relation between the impact factor (IF) and the uncitedness factor (U), the fraction of the papers that are uncited: U = 1/1+IF This generalizes the proof of Hsu and Huang [Physica A 391, 2129-2134, 2012] who obtain the same result but based on the assumption of the validity of the Matthew-effect. This new informetric function opens the discussion on universal informetric laws, distribution dependent laws and parameter dependent laws of which examples from the informetrics literature are given. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.