Search results

EigenFactor service went through some changes in 2011 before issuing the most current edition (EF‐2010) following the release of the 2010 edition of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR‐2010) in mid‐2011. Ranking journals by the EigenFactor Score (EFS) and the Article Influence Score (AIS) offered an additional pair of bibliometric indicators to assess the impact of journals in the (sub)disciplinary fields of the sciences and social sciences. In evaluating the clout, importance, and impact of journals it is essential to compare apples to apples, i.e. limiting the assessments to journals belonging to the same (sub)disciplinary areas. This paper aims to examine the quality of the subject categories created for EF‐2010 and of the JCR‐2010 subject categories as implemented within the EigenFactor services.

The paper compares the adequacy of the subject categories in the JCR‐2010 and EF‐2010, examining the assignment of 77 information and library science journals and 50 business/marketing journals to the 64 subject categories used in EF‐2010.

The study finds that EF‐2010 uses a very broad categorisation system of merely 64 subject categories along with the much more specific subject categories originally developed and enhanced for the JCR database of the Institute for Scientific Information (now Thomson‐Reuters). JCR‐2010 has four times as many categories than the former, and would offer a far more realistic comparison of the impact of comparable journals in EF‐2010 if the developers of the EigenFactor database had retained the assignment of the journals to the JCR subject categories. The inconsistency, inaccuracy and incompleteness of the journal classification practice in EF‐2010 creates a highly distorted picture of the standing of journals in their (sub)disciplinary leagues, and makes it very difficult for the users to reproduce the far more refined league lists of journals.

The paper describes the most serious limitations and errors in the classification of journals in the EF‐2010 edition.

This study aims to explore the journal bibliometric characteristics of the Journal of Documentation (JOD) and the subject relationship with other disciplines by citation analysis.

The citation data were drawn from references of each article of JOD during 1998 and 2008. Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, Library of Congress Subject Heading, retrieved from the WorldCat and LISA database were used to identify the main class, subclass and subject of cited journals and books.

The results of this study revealed that journal articles are the most cited document, followed by books and book chapters, electronic resources, and conference proceedings, respectively. The three main classes of cited journals in JOD papers are library science, science, and social sciences. The three subclasses of non‐LIS journals that were highly cited in JOD papers are Science, “Mathematics. Computer science”, and “Industries. Land use. Labor”. The three highly cited subjects of library and information science journals encompass searching, information work, and online information retrieval. The most cited main class of books in JOD papers is library and information science, followed by social sciences, science, “Philosophy. Psychology. Religion.” The three highly cited subclasses of books in JOD papers are “Books (General). Writing. Paleography. Book industries and trade. Libraries. Bibliography,” “Philology and linguistics,” and Science, and the most cited subject of books is information storage and retrieval systems.

Results for the present research found that information science, as represented by JOD, is a developing discipline with an expanding literature relating to multiple subject areas.

The aim of this paper is to explore the knowledge input and the subject relationship with other disciplines for the domain of information science through a citation analysis, from the references of each article from 1998 to 2008, of four leading information science journals, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Information Processing and Management, Journal of Information Science, and Journal of Documentation.

The Ulrich's Periodical Directory, Library of Congress Subject Heading, retrieved from the WorldCat and LISA database were used to identify the main class, subclass and subject of cited journals and books. The highly cited journals and books, the main classes and subclasses of cited journals and books in papers of the four journals, the highly cited subjects in journals and books of library and information science were identified and analyzed.

The study reveals that information science possessing strong self knowledge flow as these four source journals are also the four most cited. The class library science, book industries and trade, general information resources consists of a mainstream of knowledge flow into information science. The highly cited subjects of LIS journals encompass searching, online information retrieval, information work, subject indexing, World Wide Web, technical services, citation analysis, information seeking behavior, etc. The three most cited LCSH subjects on WorldCat of books are information storage and retrieval, information science, human‐computer interaction, etc.

The knowledge inputs for information science include mainly information science itself and social sciences and general science as well. Moreover, there are minor inputs from various subjects.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the subject change for both citing and cited literature on digital libraries based on bibliometric techniques.

Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) was used to retrieve data of journal articles in digital libraries from 1960 to 2002. By employing the thesaurus search function, three descriptors for subject search, namely electronic library concept, digital libraries and virtual library concept, as suggested by LISA, were used to retrieve all relevant literature on digital libraries.

Most of the citing core journals on digital libraries are devoted to the subject of the application of computer and information technology to library implication, while the cited literature on digital libraries distributes mainly into four types of journals, namely, digital library orientation, general library and information science, new development in librarianship, and library technology. Digital libraries, electronic media and world wide web (WWW) are the three subject terms in common most for both citing and cited core journal literature. They also constitute the core subject for digital library literature. The change of highly used subject terms, such as WWW, internet, library technology, network, university or academic library, from cited to citing literature suggests that these subjects are becoming the main stream of researches in digital libraries.

Most subject terms of this study for both citing and cited literature in digital libraries could be categorized into the technical issues. However, other related issues dealing with copyright, charging and authenticity; social issues; quality of preservation and availability; use and user study; economic issues; education and promotion have not been popular research areas yet by 2002. Further studies are needed.

The present work is unique in its study of the subject and the results obtained provide significant insights into the evolution of digital libraries by identifying the core journals and examining their characteristics, as well as subject changes between citing and cited literature on digital libraries.

The study aims to assess the journal packing density (JPD) of the research journals published across different subject discipline at the global level. The concept of JPD is aimed to compute the average number of research articles published per volume or per issue of a research journal in any given subject discipline. The study also discusses about the leading research journals publishing countries and continents across the world and their average JPD. An attempt has also been made to identify the leading research counties having maximum JPD in any given subject discipline.

The study covers 27 major research subject disciplines widely popular all across the globe. To undertake the present study, data were retrieved from SCImago Journal and Country Ranking.

In all, 36,081 research journals were indexed by Scopus across 27 major subject disciplines at the global level till 2015. During the period 2013-2015, 11,023,122 research articles were published in 36,081 research journals across 27 major subject disciplines at the global level at an average of 101.84 research articles per journal per volume. This means the average JPD of the research journals at the global level is 101.84 research articles per journal per volume. Chemistry, physics and astronomy and multidisciplinary journals are the three leading subject disciplines to have the maximum JPD, namely, 266.66, 253.92 and 242.53 research articles per journal per volume. JPD of research journals published in the sciences is higher than the JPD of research journals published in the social sciences and humanities. Business, management and accounting, social sciences and arts and humanities are three subject disciplines having lowest JPD, namely, 44.26, 35.68 and 32.66 research articles per journal per volume, respectively. China, Ireland and The Netherlands recorded the highest average JPD in the research journals published from these counties, namely, 213.39, 178.44 and 135.31 research articles per journal per volume, respectively.

Countries from where a lesser number of research journals are indexed by the popular indexes, such as Scopus, Web of Science, etc., face greater pressure of publishing. To ooze out this pressure, there is need to index more and more research journals from these countries and that can be done only by improving and maintaining the research standard over a period.

The study is original and the first of its kind undertaken at the global level across all the major subject disciplines.

Examines the productivity of journals which published articles on library and information sciences on Kenya from 1961 to 1991 to determine the number of articles published by each journal, the core productive journals and authors, the language, subject and title dispersion of journals and the extent to which the journals are indexed and abstracted. The methods adopted were frequency distribution, percentages and the graphical application of Bradford′s law. Reveals that 74 journals published 414 articles on the subject. Maktaba was the most productive journal; Otike was the most productive author; dispersion of articles among journals and subjects was low; English language accounted for 95.7 per cent of the literature; indexing coverage of the journals is 39 per cent, while abstracting coverage is 44 per cent.

This paper explains at least some of the major problems related to the subject indexing process and proposes a new approach to understanding the process, which is ordinarily described as a process that takes a number of steps. The subject is first determined, then it is described in a few sentences and, lastly, the description of the subject is converted into the indexing language. It is argued that this typical approach characteristically lacks an understanding of what the central nature of the process is. Indexing is not a neutral and objective representation of a document’s subject matter but the representation of an interpretation of a document for future use. Semiotics is offered here as a framework for understanding the “interpretative” nature of the subject indexing process. By placing this process within Peirce’s semiotic framework of ideas and terminology, a more detailed description of the process is offered which shows that the uncertainty generally associated with this process is created by the fact that the indexer goes through a number of steps and creates the subject matter of the document during this process. The creation of the subject matter is based on the indexer’s social and cultural context. The paper offers an explanation of what occurs in the indexing process and suggests that there is only little certainty to its result.

The purpose of this research is to examine the practical potentials of Bradford's law in relation to core‐journal identification.

Literature studies and empirical tests (Bradford analyses).

Literature studies reveal that the concept of “subject” has never been explicitly addressed in relation to Bradford's law. The results of two empirical tests (Bradford analyses) demonstrate that different operationalizations of the concept of “subject” produce quite different lists of core‐journals. Further, an empirical test reveals that Bradford analyses function discriminatorily against minority views.

Bradford analysis can no longer be regarded as an objective and neutral method. The received view on Bradford's law needs to be revised.

The paper questions one of the old dogmas of the field.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a novel form of deep log analysis by linking questionnaire data with transactional server log data generated by the same users; and to provide a richer understanding of the information‐seeking behaviour of a strategic community of virtual scholars.

Usage statistics were obtained from logs for an 18‐month period: 16,865 sessions were covered and 110,029 pages were viewed. Searching behaviour was studied in regard to number of returned hits and number of searches in a session. A questionnaire survey was also conducted to identify ScienceDirect users according to the subject/discipline to which they belonged and attitude towards some scholarly communication issues. The answers of more than 750 ScienceDirect users to the questionnaire were linked to the usage logs of the same users through matching internet protocol (IP) addresses.

The study reveals large differences between scholars in different subjects in terms of information‐seeking behaviour and their interaction with electronic journal systems.

The findings can be utilised to improve electronic journal systems such as ScienceDirect in order to provide more suitable service for users in different subjects.

The originality of the paper lies in its methodology that links questionnaire attitudinal data to the web log data of the same users at individual level to gain a better understanding of users' behaviour.

The aim of this paper is to conduct a study regarding the indexing of open access journals in three large, commercially available full‐text aggregation databases and using Journal Citation Reports Metrics File to further explore the journals that were being indexed.

Using publicly available database title lists produced by the full‐text aggregation database publishers, titles and title metadata were analyzed and compared to data from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Journal Citation Reports (JCR) metrics file in order to investigate the availability of open access (OA) scholarly journals. Subject Category Impact Factor Ranking Quartiles and Percentiles (SCIFRQs and SCIFRPs) were used as part of this investigation as indicators of the research significance of these OA journals.

Results showed that very small percentages of open access journals were indexed in each of the full‐text aggregators studied. A total of 7.9 percent of titles included in journal citation reports were OA journals. This study also reports the averaged SCIFRPs of OA journals for all subject areas with more than five journals included in JCR. The average SCIFRP for OA journals included in JCR was 34.49 percent and the averaged SCIFRP for all OA journals indexed by full‐text aggregation databases being studied is 41.2 percent. This study points to large differences in the rate of indexing OA journals by different databases.

Unlike past studies into the indexing of OA journals, this is not limited to selected subject areas and shows indications of the research prominence of OA journals with JCR derived data.