27 januari 2007
How many scholarly journals are out there?
Recently I read two articles where figures were presented for the number of scholarly journals that are out there. Figures that are actually way off.
Dong et al. (2005) start their article as follows: "The number of periodical peer-reviewed scientific publications is conservatively estimated to exceed 16,000 worldwide; nearly 1.4 million articles are published every year". They based their number on studies by Mabe published in 2001 and 2003. Another article (Ioannidis, 2006) Starts as follows "Despite a very large number of scientific journals (probably exceeding 100,000 worldwide), the concentration of scientific information is skewed to a minority of journals that publish the majority of the articles (Bradford's law) and receive the majority of the citations." It is the unsubstantiated remark between brackets "probably exceeding 100,000 worldwide" that really struck me.
Way back in 2003 I started a discussion with Stevan Harnad on the number of peer reviewed journals that existed at that moment. Based on Ulrich I came to the conclusion that there were about 18,846 academic journals out there. In that same discussion a manager from Ulrich came up with the figure of 24,116 refereed serials. Refereed serials include refereed journals as well as refereed proceedings. The last one in the thread was Carol Tenopir who has kept track of these numbers quite regularly and showed that the numbers vary a lot according to search strategy. The most comprehensive number was at that moment 43,667 academic/scholarly periodicals.
Slightly later Carol Tenopir wrote a column on this subject in Library Journal where she highlighted this seemingly simple question. She concluded "I can say with confidence that as of the end of 2003, there are just under 50,000 scholarly journals and somewhere between one-third and just over one-half of them are in digital form."
Actually, since then Harnad uses 24,000-50,000, which is more than 16,000 and a lot less than 100,000.
Literature:
Dong, P., M. Loh, et al. (2005). The "impact factor" revisted. Biomedical Digital Libraries 2(7). http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/2/1/7
Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2006). Concentration of the Most-Cited Papers in the Scientific Literature: Analysis of Journal Ecosystems. PLoS ONE 1(1): e5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000005
Mabe, M. (2003). The growth and number of journals. Serials 16(2): 191-197. http://uksg.metapress.com/link.asp?id=f195g8ak0eu21muh
Mabe, M. and M. Amin (2001). Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals. Scientometrics 51(1): 147-162.
Tenopir, C. (2004). Online scholarly journals: How many? Library Journal 129(2): 32. http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA374956
Dong et al. (2005) start their article as follows: "The number of periodical peer-reviewed scientific publications is conservatively estimated to exceed 16,000 worldwide; nearly 1.4 million articles are published every year". They based their number on studies by Mabe published in 2001 and 2003. Another article (Ioannidis, 2006) Starts as follows "Despite a very large number of scientific journals (probably exceeding 100,000 worldwide), the concentration of scientific information is skewed to a minority of journals that publish the majority of the articles (Bradford's law) and receive the majority of the citations." It is the unsubstantiated remark between brackets "probably exceeding 100,000 worldwide" that really struck me.
Way back in 2003 I started a discussion with Stevan Harnad on the number of peer reviewed journals that existed at that moment. Based on Ulrich I came to the conclusion that there were about 18,846 academic journals out there. In that same discussion a manager from Ulrich came up with the figure of 24,116 refereed serials. Refereed serials include refereed journals as well as refereed proceedings. The last one in the thread was Carol Tenopir who has kept track of these numbers quite regularly and showed that the numbers vary a lot according to search strategy. The most comprehensive number was at that moment 43,667 academic/scholarly periodicals.
Slightly later Carol Tenopir wrote a column on this subject in Library Journal where she highlighted this seemingly simple question. She concluded "I can say with confidence that as of the end of 2003, there are just under 50,000 scholarly journals and somewhere between one-third and just over one-half of them are in digital form."
Actually, since then Harnad uses 24,000-50,000, which is more than 16,000 and a lot less than 100,000.
Literature:
Dong, P., M. Loh, et al. (2005). The "impact factor" revisted. Biomedical Digital Libraries 2(7). http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/2/1/7
Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2006). Concentration of the Most-Cited Papers in the Scientific Literature: Analysis of Journal Ecosystems. PLoS ONE 1(1): e5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000005
Mabe, M. (2003). The growth and number of journals. Serials 16(2): 191-197. http://uksg.metapress.com/link.asp?id=f195g8ak0eu21muh
Mabe, M. and M. Amin (2001). Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals. Scientometrics 51(1): 147-162.
Tenopir, C. (2004). Online scholarly journals: How many? Library Journal 129(2): 32. http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA374956
Labels: English
