Skip to main content
Log in

The subject composition of the world's scientific journals

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A country by subject count of the serial periodical collection at the British Library Lending Division (BLLD) in 1973 is reported and compared to previous counts. Approximately 25 000 periodicals have titles indicating that they are scientific journals in nine fields of the physical and biological sciences, engineering, and mathematics. The overall subject distribution of the journals appears to be remarkably stable when compared to a similar count byHulme 60 years ago, although the number of journals appears to have doubled in the last 60 years. A major shift was found in the national origin of the journals, when compared withHulme's counts, with a notable rise in the number and percent of U.S. journals, and a sharp decline in the percentage of French and German journals.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes and references

  1. National Science Board,Science Indicators 1972, Washington, D. C., 1973.

  2. National Science Board,Science Indicators 1974, Washington, D. C., 1975.

  3. F. NARIN, M. CARPENTER, National Publication and Citation Comparisons.Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 26 (1975) No. 2, 80–93.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Science Citation Index, SCI. Copyright Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, PA.

  5. National Science Board,Science Indicators 1976, Washington, D. C., 1977.

  6. The tape was obtained from BLLD by D. B. McCARN, National Library of Medicine, and forwarded to us by permission of Dr. A HARLEY of the British Lending Library.

  7. K. P. BARR, Estimates of the Number of Currently Available Scientific and Technical Periodicals.Journal of Documentation, 23 (1967) No. 2, 110–116.

    Google Scholar 

  8. J. D. FRAME, F. NARIN, M. P. CARPENTER, The Distribution of World Science,Social Studies of Science, 7 (1977) No. 4, 501–516.

    Google Scholar 

  9. E. W. HULME,Statistical Bibliography in Relation to the Growth of Modern Civilization, London, Grafton, 1923.

    Google Scholar 

  10. D. de SOLLA PRICE,Little Science, Big Science, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1963.

    Google Scholar 

  11. C. M. GOTTSCHALK, W. F. DESMOND, World-Wide Census of Scientific and Technical Serials.American Documentation, (July, 1963) 188–192.

  12. C. P. BOURNE, The World's Journal Literature: An Estimate of Volume, Origin, Language, Field, Indexing, and Abstracting.American Documentation, (April, 1962) 159–168.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Carpenter, M.P., Narin, F. The subject composition of the world's scientific journals. Scientometrics 2, 53–63 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016599

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016599

Keywords

Navigation