Provides an overview of journal evaluation indicators, highlighting strengths and weaknesses and their range of applicability. Topics include the definition of a quality journal; different notions of impact factors; citation models; electronic journals; ranking journals; possible biases in citation databases; and using the journal impact in…

A citation study investigated the coverage by abstracting and indexing services of literature dealing with the environmental effects of the forest and forest products industries, the impact of man on the forest ecology, and methods for maximizing forest tree utilization. A search of nine secondary sources (abstracting and indexing services)…

Illustrates a method to divide large citation database files into clusters of journals without requiring the use of arbitrary starting points. Results are discussed relative to biomedical literature. (Author/FM)

Describes the common and distinguishing features of coauthorship trends and patterns in selected science fields. Analyzes the relation between coauthorship schemes and other bibliometric features such as publication activity and citation impact; concludes that the extent of coauthorship varies among fields; and suggests implications for database…

Based on analysis of a computer corpus of 80 research articles and interviews with experienced writers, this study investigates the contextual variability of citations in eight disciplines and suggests how textual conventions point to distinctions in ways knowledge is negotiated and confirmed within different academic communities. (Author/VWL)

Using Institute for Scientific Information bibliographic databases covering all subject fields in 1970s, 659 research journal papers on Cyprus (215 in science, 282 in social science, 162 in arts and humanities) were analyzed to answer specific bibliometric questions. Tables covering papers, authors, journals, and book reviews are appended.…

Describes a fully automated approach for indexing documents that is based on associating textwords in a training set of bibliographic citations with the indexing of journals. Discusses the use of journal descriptors (JDs) in the MEDLINE database that could also be used to search other journal articles, monographs, and Web documents. (Author/LRW)

Examines relationship between journal productivity (number of references to particular journal) and journal obsolescence (median age of references to particular journal) for database of references dealing with desalination. Citation age by Bradford zones, continuous measurement of productivity and citation age, and underlying structure of observed…

This study describes and evaluates key bibliometric patterns in the articles published by the former "Journal of Education for Librarianship" (JEL) during its first 24 volumes of existence from 1960 to 1984. Data from each issue of JEL were collected and analyzed using a statistical analysis software package, SPSSx (Statistical Package…

Case study on acid rain illustrates procedures for systematized tracking of issues: using bibliometric methods to list journals to be scanned; using current awareness searches of online databases to supplement journal scanning; using literature monitoring to create significant terms file; and tracking terms through online database index. (10…

Describes techniques for using the SCISEARCH database to determine how often a particular journal is cited by authors affiliated with a particular institution. The use of CROSSTALK and WordPerfect to create offline searches to minimize costs is explained, and using the resulting information to make journal subscription and cancellation decisions…