Bibliometric analysis of ISI's Arts & Humanities Citation Index (abstract only)

The most frequently cited journal articles in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) are analyzed in terms of their disciplinary classification. Four years (1976-79) of the A&HCI data base yielded 144 journal articles which were cited 10 or more times during the period. These articles are predominantly from the disciplines of Language and Linguistics (31%), Philosophy (23%), History (13%), Religion (8%), and Archeology (6%).However, most citations in the A&HCI are to books rather than journal articles (96% versus 4% among those items cited 10 or more times). The discipline of Literature (or Literary Criticism) is predominant in the list of highly cited books.These statistics suggest systematic variation in the resources used by the different disciplines. Various other aspects of the A&HCI data base are explored, and some specific examples are discussed in depth.