Highly cited Soviet journals in the physical and life sciences: A study of the function of journals

Abstract

The research developed from the identification of the most highly cited Soviet journals in the physical and life sciences. Several measures of growth and citedness were taken at the beginning and end of a recent five-year period, 1982–87, in order to generally assess the functions of these journals. The research involved making comparisons among these groupings of journals and control groupings of journals with similar content, but not published in the Soviet Union. Differences in citedness could be related, in the physical sciences, to the scale of Russophone science within world sciences, but not in the life sciences. In the physical sciences, there are increases in the citedness across Soviet and Western journals; but in the Soviet journals the increase is several times greater than in the control grouping. In sharp contrast, the largest, most cited, Western life sciences' journals have increased in citedness and other groupings, including Soviet journals, have declined. The measures on control groups show that the extreme levels of improvement in citedness on the part of Soviet physical sciences' journals reflect local, i.e. Soviet, developments. The decrease in citedness of Soviet life sciences' journals seems, instead, tied broadly to events in the world life sciences' literature. There has been, apparently a “centralizing” of attention within those discipline on those few journals publishing major findings while leaving the rest of the world literature behind. In addition, the research developed several findings on the formal properties of the measures used.