中文化学期刊文献老化的分析研究

Study on the Obsolescence of Chinese Periodical Literature in Chemistry

科技文献老化问题是文献计量学的重要研究课题之一。据统计,从1971到1991的20年期间,在国外10种文献计量学的核心期刊上发表的涉及8个主题的136篇论文中,研究文献老化的有32篇,仅次于布拉德福定律方面的研究(37篇),居整个研究领域的第二位。在我国的科技期刊中,无论在数量上或质量上,化学期刊都居于重要位置。

Obsolescence of scientific literature is one of the most important research areas for bibliometrics. Using the citation database for Chinese Chemical Journals in 1985—1989 authors have studied the distribution of citations in time. The half-life for chemical literature, as we have measured with the Burton s formula, is equal to 8.1 yr. But the halt-life of the chinese chemical literature is more less than that for the foreign countries. For comparison the authors have provided a list of values of the half-life of chemical periodical literature for seven subfields of chemistry published in chinese and other foreign languages. Some proper explanations are given for the obtained results of ageing for chemical literature in chinese. For the journal productivity and obsolescence have been studied extensively as separate phenomena, there have been few studies that explicitly relate journal productivity and obsolescence. The authors have examined the relationship between journal productivity and journal obsolescence for the same database metioned above, Journal productivity has to do with the relative eontributions of jourmals to a subject literature. The discussion of journal productivity most frequently is carried in terms of the Bradford distribution. The results obtained by authors arc partly in favour of the conclusions given by D. P. Wallace. Authors have provided the interpretations regarding the relationship between journal productivity and obsolescence for chinese chemical literature.