Scientific Journals and Databases as a Source of Documentation and Transfer of Science: An Analysis of Citations of Polish Occupational Medicine Journals
Jolanta Przyłuska

Abstract

Nowadays, libraries are not only responsible for collecting and providing relevant collections, but also for managing and navigating the access to vast body of knowledge. Owing to the progress of information technology, the number of multidisciplinary bases containing information on publications from all over the world is still growing. Databases, following an analysis of citations, allow ome to trace the dissemination of a given publication among researchers and define the role of journals in an international transfer of scientific information. In the Scientific Library at the Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine in Łódź, there is a complete collection of two Polish medical journals specialized in occupational medicine: International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health (IJOMEH) published in English and Medycyna Pracy (Med Pr) published in Polish. The two journals are indexed in numerous reference databases, e.g., MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, which has contributed to the spread of issues raised in these publications. The Scopus-based analysis of citations of articles published in both journals makes it possible to trace the transfer of medical knowledge to other scientific centers in the world.

Introduction

Current changes in the work organization of libraries, resulting from rapid progress in information technology (IT), collection of data and information distribution, pose new challenges for library circles. Modern technologies and new sources of information give a wider look at the means of making huge resources of information available. Multidisciplinary databases allow one to trace quantitative links between publications all over the world.

Nowadays, libraries are responsible not only for collecting and providing relevant collections, but also for managing and navigating the access to vast body of knowledge. Databases enriched with additional information tools provide the ground for varied quantitative analyses. Owing to the attached references, it is now feasible to investigate links between individual publications. On the other hand, citation analyses allow one to observe the development and the course of research works, and to recognize their international character.

Polish Journals of Occupational Medicine

The Scientific Library at the Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine in Łódź, Poland, specializes in the collection of medical journals in general, and occupational medicine journals in particular. Research workers of the Institute, physicians and specialists involved in studies of health risk at work, form the major group of the Library users. The Scientific Library resources include a complete collection of two Polish journals specialized in occupational medicine: a bimonthly Medycyna Pracy (Med Pr) published in Polish since 1950 and a quarterly International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health (IJOMEH) published in English since 1988. Both journals provide documentation for studies and other activities in the area of occupational medicine, occupational diseases, toxicology, work hygiene, and environmental hazards. Polish researchers and specialists form a major group of the authors who publish in the Med Pr, whereas papers from all over the world are submitted to the IJOMEH.

Both journals are indexed in numerous international reference databases (e.g., MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus). The Med Pr bimonthly was placed on the Index Medicus list in 1977 and the IJOMEH quarterly in 1988. Beginning with 2006, the two journals can be found among 5,000 biomedical journals published in different parts of the world and indexed in the MEDLINE database (National Library of Medicine, 2006). One year earlier, they entered the bases of BIOSIS Previews and Biological Abstracts issued by the ISI Thomson Scientific and can be traced among nearly 160 Polish journals present on the Master Journal List (Thomson Scientific, 2006).

The Scopus-based Analysis of Citations

In 2004, a multidisciplinary, reference and abstract database Scopus were made available by Elsevier B.V. Scopus embraces a body of knowledge that is much more extensive than that available from databases functioning so far. It contains over 27 million reference documents derived from over 14,000 journals, including all titles from the MEDLINE database. Moreover, it has put into circulation a large number of European journals (about 60% of journals come from outside the United States). Owing to Scopus, the navigation in the area of scientific publications with abstracts has been made possible since 1966, and the references were introduced in 1996 so that an analysis of citations, providing information how many times and by whom a given article has been cited can be performed since then (Burnham, 2006).

At the beginning of 2006, the Scopus-based analysis of citations of articles published in both journals was performed in the Nofer Institute Scientific Library. The results obtained as of 10 February 2006 for Med Pr, and those as of 3 March 2006 for IJOMEH became then the subject of thorough investigations (Przyłuska, 2006a; 2006b).

In the years 1996–2005, 444 (Pub) articles published in the quarterly and 656 articles published in the bimonthly were documented in the Scopus database (see Table 1). There were 985 citations (Cyt) of retrieved IJOMEH articles and 445 citations of Med Pr articles. The mean rate (the number of citations per one publication calculated as the Cyt/Pub ratio) was 2.22 for IJOMEH and 0.68 for Med Pr.

Table 1: Number of citations from IJOMEH and Med Pr.
Year	Publications (Pub)		Citations (Cyt)		Citation rate (Cyt/Pub)
	IJOMEH	Med Pr	IJOMEH	Med Pr	IJOMEH	Med Pr
1996	41	74	127	49	3.10	0.66
1997	45	74	181	81	4.02	1.09
1998	33	62	161	48	4.88	0.77
1999	38	40	100	32	2.63	0.80
2000	36	66	86	47	2.39	0.71
2001	56	71	128	70	2.29	0.99
2002	50	75	82	52	1.64	0.69
2003	44	79	83	42	1.89	0.53
2004	59	68	35	23	0.59	0.34
2005	42	47	127	1	0.05	0.02
Total	444	656	985	445	2.22	0.68

The distribution of citations from a given volume was also analyzed for both journals (see Tables 2 and 3). As appears from the obtained results, the time-lag between publication and citation becomes still shorter. The increase in citations observed in the recent years can be explained by a growing interest in problems addressed in individual articles as well as by an easier access to abstracts via the Internet, the automation of retrieval, the establishment of new databases and the development of instruments facilitating the collection of references from all over the world.

Table 2: Citations of articles from individual annual IJOMEH volumes, 1997–2006.
Volume	Year										Total
	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
	Citations
9/96	5	9	15	17	20	22	15	12	12	0	127
10/97	0	3	11	31	29	26	27	25	27	2	181
11/98		0	2	16	20	27	27	36	26	7	161
12/99			0	7	9	13	23	25	22	1	100
13/00				0	8	13	23	18	20	4	86
14/01					2	17	25	41	34	9	128
15/02						3	15	33	26	5	82
16/03							6	26	49	2	83
17/04								4	28	3	35
18/05									2	0	2
Total	5	12	28	71	88	121	161	220	246	33	985

Table 3: Citations of articles from individual annual Med Pr volumes, 1998–2006.
Volume	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	Total
47/95	2	3	8	6	6	13	6	5	0	49
48/97	2	10	12	13	11	16	11	6	0	81
49/98	0	0	6	7	8	13	6	8	0	48
50/99		0	0	5	6	11	6	4	0	32
51/00			0	1	10	17	12	7	0	4
52/01				1	5	22	16	25	1	70
53/02					2	19	17	14	0	52
54/03						6	18	18	0	42
55/04							7	14	2	23
56/05								0	1	1
Total	4	13	26	33	48	117	99	101	4	445

This analysis also checked which IJOMEH and Med Pr articles had been cited most frequently. The analysis of citation frequency in 1996–2005 is summarized in Tables 4 and 5.

The highest interest was evoked by one paper published in 1998, which was expressed by 35 citations. This was followed by one of 1995 — 25 citations, and one in 1999 — 19 citations. Among articles published in Med Pr, the largest number of citations (14 times) was enjoyed by an article published in 1997. The second and the third places are occupied by articles published in 2001 (10 times) and 1997 (8 times), respectively.

Table 4: The frequency of citations of IJOMEH articles.
Citation frequency
Vol.	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	25	35	Publ.
9/96	15	8	4	2	3	2	0	2	0	1	0	2	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	41
10/97	14	6	5	2	2	1	0	4	2	3	1	1	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	45
11/98	6	6	4	2	3	3	2	0	1	1	1	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	33
12/99	14	6	7	3	3	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	0	0	38
13/00	10	6	6	5	2	3	1	0	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	36
14/01	26	9	7	2	3	3	0	0	1	0	2	0	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	56
15/02	21	12	4	7	1	1	1	0	1	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	50
16/03	17	10	7	4	1	2	0	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	44
17/04	36	16	5	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	59
18/05	40	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	42
Total	199	81	49	28	18	15	6	7	9	9	4	5	2	2	2	1	0	2	2	1	1	1	444

Table 5: The frequency of citations of Med Pr articles.
Vol.	Citation frequency										Publ.
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	8	10	14
47/96	46	15	9	2	1	0	1	0	0	0	74
48/97	44	12	6	6	3	1	0	1	0	1	74
49/98	38	13	4	3	1	3	0	0	0	0	62
50/99	22	11	2	4	0	1	0	0	0	0	40
51/00	40	12	9	3	2	0	0	0	0	0	66
52/01	38	19	4	6	1	1	1	0	1	0	71
53/02	48	17	5	0	2	1	2	0	0	0	75
54/03	49	20	8	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	79
55/04	49	15	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	68
56/05	46	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	47
Total	420	135	51	26	10	7	4	1	1	1	656

The Impact of Scientific Journals and its Scope

Due to this analysis it was possible to assess the contribution of Polish professional journals, specialized in different medical disciplines, to the development of world science. The access to the Scopus database, in which IJOMEH and Med Pr are registered, renders it possible to retrieve publications with the broadest scope of their impact. The analysis shows that papers addressing issues falling into the area of toxicology, including harmful effects of chemical and physical factors on humans, environmental hazards, occupational exposure, and epidemiology are cited most frequently. The majority of articles were cited in foreign journals (of the 382 citations of IJOMEH articles, 354 were found in foreign journals).

Figure 1: The scope of the IJOMEH impact (based on the article cited most frequently).

 

The results of the studies published in IJOMEH are disseminated all over the world. The authors representing research centers in Japan, Sweden, Turkey, U.S., Norway, Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Korea referred to the paper that cited was most frequently (Figure 1).

Among Med Pr articles most frequently cited between 1999 and 2005, the leading position is taken by the paper cited 14 times, of which 12 citations were made by researchers from various foreign centers. Apart from Poland, the impact of this paper reached six countries: France, India, Iran, Argentina, Brazil, and the U.S. Of the nine citations of another paper published in 2001, eight were made by the authors from Turkey and one from Saudi Arabia. Still another one of 1993 had nine citations, of which four in the U.S., and two in each of the following countries: Poland, France, Italy, and China (Table 6).

 

Table 6: Countries of origin of the authors who cited articles published in Med Pr.
Country (number of citations)
Poland (82)	Italy (3)	Great Britain (2)
U.S.A. (27)	Brazil (2)	Argentina (1)
Turkey (15)	Czech (2)	Australia (1)
India (8)	Finland (2)	Belgium (1)
France (5)	Germany (2)	Croatia (1)
Iran (4)	Pakistan (2)	Greece (1)
Saudi Arabia (3)	Portugal (2)	Japan (1)
China (3)	Slovakia (2)	Romania (1)
Canada (3)	Tunisia (2)	Russia (1)

Figure 2: The scope of the Med Pr impact (based on 29 articles cited most frequently).

 

Of the 179 citations of 29 articles most frequently cited, 82 were from Poland, which provides evidence that the Medycyna Pracy plays an important role for Polish specialists involved in problems of health hazards in the work environment. Nevertheless much interest in Med Pr articles were noticed in the U.S. (27 citations), Turkey (15 citations) and India (8 citations) [see Figure 2]. Several dozen papers attracted attention of specialists in 25 countries from different regions of the world, which also indicates that the information about studies carried out in Polish research centers is broadly disseminated.

References

Burnham, J.F., 2006. “Scopus database: A review.” Biomedical Digital Libraries, 3, no. 1, at http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/3/1/1/ (accessed 8 April 2006).

National Library of Medicine, 2006. “List of journals indexed for MEDLINE,” at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html (accessed 8 June 2006).

Przyłuska, J. 2006a. “International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health in world documentation services: The Scopus-based analysis of citation,” International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health, 19, no. 1, pp. 1–5.

Przyłuska, J. 2006b. “Medycyna Pracy: The Scopus-based analysis of citations,“ Medycyna Pracy, 57, np. 3, pp. 303–309.

Thomson Scientific, 2006. “Master journal list,” at http://scientific.thomson.com/mjl (accessed 8 June 2006).

About the Author

Jolanta Przyłuska is Head of the Scientific Library, Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine, Łódź, Poland.
E–mail: przyjol [at] imp [dot] lodz [dot] pl
© 2008 Jolanta Przyłuska.