The structure of social science literature as shown by a large-scale citation analysis

The results imply that secondary services in the social sciences are deficient in the range of forms of material they cover, in the number and possibly the selection of serials covered, inThe subject spread of material of possible relevance, and probably also of foreign language material and material published in many other countries.

Abstract

To collect information relevant to the improvement of secondary services, an analysis of 59,000 citations in the social sciences was conducted— 11,000 taken from 300 monographs, and 48,000 from 140 serials, including 47 highly cited titles and 47 taken at random. The analyses, the main results of which are summarized, included concentration and scatter, rank lists of cited serials, date distributions (crudely corrected for literature growth), subject relationships, country and language links, and forms of material cited. Large differences were apparent between analyses of references taken from serials and those from monographs, and smaller differences between analyses of references from highly cited and randomly chosen serials. This suggests that analyses based only on references from highly cited serials give a very incomplete picture. There were also great differences between subjects; most of these differences have implications for the planning of secondary services. The results imply that secondary services in the social sciences are deficient in the range of forms of material they cover, in the number and possibly the selection of serials covered, in the subject spread of material of possible relevance, and probably also of foreign language material and material published in many other countries.