Comparative analysis of the penetrative capacity of synopses and of full papers unrelated to the synopses published in the same broad-scope agricultural journal
Identifieur interne : 001145 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 001144; suivant : 001146Comparative analysis of the penetrative capacity of synopses and of full papers unrelated to the synopses published in the same broad-scope agricultural journal
Auteurs : Dirk G. Van Der Heij ; Jan Van Der Burg ; Ian R. C. Cressie ; Michel WedelSource :
- Journal of Information Science [ 0165-5515 ] ; 1990-06.
Abstract
As from 1984, synopses based on unpublished research reports have been published in the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science (NJAS), in addition to full papers unre lated to the synopses. To study readers' behaviour towards the synopsis, which is still a relatively uncommon vehicle of primary communication, both full papers (n = 94) and synopses (n = 67) published in NJAS in 1984-1986 were subjected to citation analysis. Self-ci tations ("autocitations," as opposed to "allocitations") were excluded from most analyses. On average, citation yields were significantly lower for synopses than for full papers. The citation yields vaned strongly between the three years. The distribution of the journal's contents over the various subdisciplines of agricultural science explamed fairly well the capricious behaviour of citation yields over the years, but not the difference in yield between synopses and full papers. Further, the coverage of NJAS papers by five major biblio graphic databases was analysed. AGRIS and SCISEARCH covered NJAS' contents integrally. Thirteen percent of all papers (n = 21) covered by AGRIS and SCISEARCH only had not been cited at all. CHEMABS' coverage appeared to be fmrly consistent with the scope of this database (chemistry). However, BIOSIS' and CABI's coverage behaviour over the period in question appeared to be characterized by incon sistency and arbitrariness. Coverage by BIOSIS and CABI was significantly better for full papers than for synopses (BIOSIS 87% and 43%. and CABI 65% and 48%, respectively). After correction for bibliographic coverage the citation yield was still lower for synopses than for full papers, but the difference was no longer significant. Two-thirds of the initial difference in citation yield between full papers and synopses could be attributed to differences in bibliographic coverage. It is concluded that inconsistent bibliographic coverage procedures seriously undermine the penetrative capacity (and hence meaningfulness) of papers published in journals whose readers depend largely on bibliographic sources.
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DOI: 10.1177/016555159001600303
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<front><div type="abstract" xml:lang="en">As from 1984, synopses based on unpublished research reports have been published in the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science (NJAS), in addition to full papers unre lated to the synopses. To study readers' behaviour towards the synopsis, which is still a relatively uncommon vehicle of primary communication, both full papers (n = 94) and synopses (n = 67) published in NJAS in 1984-1986 were subjected to citation analysis. Self-ci tations ("autocitations," as opposed to "allocitations") were excluded from most analyses. On average, citation yields were significantly lower for synopses than for full papers. The citation yields vaned strongly between the three years. The distribution of the journal's contents over the various subdisciplines of agricultural science explamed fairly well the capricious behaviour of citation yields over the years, but not the difference in yield between synopses and full papers. Further, the coverage of NJAS papers by five major biblio graphic databases was analysed. AGRIS and SCISEARCH covered NJAS' contents integrally. Thirteen percent of all papers (n = 21) covered by AGRIS and SCISEARCH only had not been cited at all. CHEMABS' coverage appeared to be fmrly consistent with the scope of this database (chemistry). However, BIOSIS' and CABI's coverage behaviour over the period in question appeared to be characterized by incon sistency and arbitrariness. Coverage by BIOSIS and CABI was significantly better for full papers than for synopses (BIOSIS 87% and 43%. and CABI 65% and 48%, respectively). After correction for bibliographic coverage the citation yield was still lower for synopses than for full papers, but the difference was no longer significant. Two-thirds of the initial difference in citation yield between full papers and synopses could be attributed to differences in bibliographic coverage. It is concluded that inconsistent bibliographic coverage procedures seriously undermine the penetrative capacity (and hence meaningfulness) of papers published in journals whose readers depend largely on bibliographic sources.</div>
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in addition to full papers unre lated to the synopses.</p>
<p>To study readers' behaviour towards the synopsis, which is still a relatively uncommon vehicle of primary communication, both full papers (<italic>n</italic>
= 94) and synopses (<italic>n</italic>
= 67) published in <italic>NJAS</italic>
in 1984-1986 were subjected to citation analysis. Self-ci tations ("autocitations," as opposed to "allocitations") were excluded from most analyses. On average, citation yields were significantly lower for synopses than for full papers. The citation yields vaned strongly between the three years.</p>
<p>The distribution of the journal's contents over the various subdisciplines of agricultural science explamed fairly well the capricious behaviour of citation yields over the years, but not the difference in yield between synopses and full papers.</p>
<p>Further, the coverage of <italic> NJAS</italic>
papers by five major biblio graphic databases was analysed. AGRIS and SCISEARCH covered <italic>NJAS'</italic>
contents integrally. Thirteen percent of all papers (<italic>n</italic>
= 21) covered by AGRIS and SCISEARCH only had not been cited at all. CHEMABS' coverage appeared to be fmrly consistent with the scope of this database (chemistry). However, BIOSIS' and CABI's coverage behaviour over the period in question appeared to be characterized by incon sistency and arbitrariness. Coverage by BIOSIS and CABI was significantly better for full papers than for synopses (BIOSIS 87% and 43%. and CABI 65% and 48%, respectively).</p>
<p>After correction for bibliographic coverage the citation yield was still lower for synopses than for full papers, but the difference was no longer significant. Two-thirds of the initial difference in citation yield between full papers and synopses could be attributed to differences in bibliographic coverage.</p>
<p>It is concluded that inconsistent bibliographic coverage procedures seriously undermine the penetrative capacity (and hence meaningfulness) of papers published in journals whose readers depend largely on bibliographic sources.</p>
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<meta-value>155 Comparative analysis of the penetrative capacity of synopses and of full papers unrelated to the synopses published in the same broad-scope agricultural journal SAGE Publications, Inc.1990DOI: 10.1177/016555159001600303 Dirk G. van der Heij TNO-CIVO Toxicology and Nutrition Institute. Postbus 360, 3700 AJ Zeist, The Netherlands Jan van der Burg Pudoc (Centre for Agricultural Publishing and Documentation). Postbus 4, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands Ian R.C. Cressie Pudoc (Centre for Agricultural Publishing and Documentation). Postbus 4, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands Michel Wedel TNO-CIVO Toxicology and Nutrition Institute. Postbus 360, 3700 AJ Zeist, The Netherlands Received 16 August 1989 Revised 8 December 1989 As from 1984, synopses based on unpublished research reports have been published in the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science (NJAS), in addition to full papers unre lated to the synopses. To study readers' behaviour towards the synopsis, which is still a relatively uncommon vehicle of primary communication, both full papers (n = 94) and synopses (n = 67) published in NJAS in 1984-1986 were subjected to citation analysis. Self-ci tations ("autocitations," as opposed to "allocitations") were excluded from most analyses. On average, citation yields were significantly lower for synopses than for full papers. The citation yields vaned strongly between the three years. The distribution of the journal's contents over the various subdisciplines of agricultural science explamed fairly well the capricious behaviour of citation yields over the years, but not the difference in yield between synopses and full papers. Further, the coverage of NJAS papers by five major biblio graphic databases was analysed. AGRIS and SCISEARCH covered NJAS' contents integrally. Thirteen percent of all papers (n = 21) covered by AGRIS and SCISEARCH only had not been cited at all. CHEMABS' coverage appeared to be fmrly consistent with the scope of this database (chemistry). However, BIOSIS' and CABI's coverage behaviour over the period in question appeared to be characterized by incon sistency and arbitrariness. Coverage by BIOSIS and CABI was significantly better for full papers than for synopses (BIOSIS 87% and 43%. and CABI 65% and 48%, respectively). After correction for bibliographic coverage the citation yield was still lower for synopses than for full papers, but the difference was no longer significant. Two-thirds of the initial difference in citation yield between full papers and synopses could be attributed to differences in bibliographic coverage. It is concluded that inconsistent bibliographic coverage procedures seriously undermine the penetrative capacity (and hence meaningfulness) of papers published in journals whose readers depend largely on bibliographic sources. * Managing editor of the synopsis publishing project. 1983- 1987. ** Managing editor of the synopsis publishing project, 1987- 1989. 1 Introduction During the past two decades, in particular the 1970s, synopsis publishing has been one of the topics raised in discussions on the future of scientific communication and information. Several synopsis publishing experiments have been started, but most of these have proved to be ephemeral [2,4,7,10]. Synopses are concise primary papers based on more comprehensive back-up material, either full papers or reports, which is either published in a companion edition to the journal, or made available on demand. According to the American National Standard for Synoptics [1] a synopsis is "a concise first publication by the author, in a primary journal, of those key ideas and results, selected from a full paper or a report on completed work, that are judged most important and most directly useful to others." So, a synopsis is a primary paper and, unlike an abstract, equal in most respects to a traditional paper in a ;scholarly journal. Although the interest in alternatives to traditional publishing practices can be inspired along various lines of approach, the reasons to start synopsis publishing ventures have been dictated in 18156 most cases primarily by the feeling that information buyers (libraries) could no longer cope with the ever-growing supply of scholarly papers. Synopses were seen as a cost-effective alternative for libraries, saving library space and money [2,5,6,8]. Towards the end of 1983, Pudoc and the Royal (Netherlands) Society for Agricultural Science jointly embarked on a synopsis publishing venture based on unpublished research reports in the fields of agriculture and (applied) biology. Synopses based on these reports were published, as from 1984, in the Society journal Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science ( NJAS ), and the reports were made available on demand from the Netherlands Agricultural Report Depository, based at Pudoc. The philosophy, organization and early results of this venture have been outlined earlier [4]. Since the scientific community as a whole tends to be strongly conservative about primary publishing practices [4,5,10], any publishing initiative departing from the beaten track is prone to distrust. Such initiatives can be successful only if they are accepted by all parties involved (authors, readers, referees, editors) and if the penetrative capacity of "alternative" publications is comparable to that of the traditional publications. Therefore even in 1984 we felt that the feasibility study prior to the start of the venture (D.G. van der Heij, unpublished report) should be followed up by an acceptance study among both readers and authors, as well as an impact analysis. We were anxious to know how the users would value synopsis publishing after some years of familiarization, how their value judgements would relate to citation behaviour, how the penetrative capacity of synopses would compare to that of full papers published in the same journal, and which factors influence this capacity. (A favourable outcome of such an analysis would provide an important selling argument for the synopsis idea!) The NJAS-Pudoc synopsis publishing project is unique in several respects. First, economics has not been its sole, nor even its major incentive. An inventory in 1981 (unpublished report) indicated that, annually, the results of some 500 Dutch agricultural research projects were laid down in "grey" reports and remained unpublished. Another inventory in 1984 among some 80 heads of departments of Wageningen Agricultural University and directors of agricultural research institutes in the Netherlands revealed that, according to these re- spondents, the majority of these research results were worthy of being published in some form or other. The synopsis publishing idea was widely approved [4]. It seemed, therefore, worthwhile to bring to light at least part of this treasure of knowledge and, again, synopsis publishing seemed an attractive and cost-effective way of doing so. Second, in contrast to most other synopsis publishing enterprises, the NJAS-Pudoc venture is based on "grey" reports instead of full papers. Consequently, the back-up documents are not published in some kind of companion edition to NJAS but are made available on demand. Since the back-up documents remain unpublished they need not be reviewed, edited, typeset and printed, which enhances the cost-effectiveness of synopsis publishing procedures. Third, NJAS is exceptional in that it comprises both synopses and full papers, each unrelated to the other. Because of this mixed character of NJAS, a comparative investigation into the acceptance of the synopsis idea and into the impact of papers on the scientific community need not be hampered by confounding variables such as scope of the journal, readership and circulation. Since NJAS has a very broad scope we assumed that it was unlikely to be a top journal for any of the disciplines covered. This assumption implies that most of its readers do not take note of the papers immediately upon appearance of a journal issue, but rely heavily on abstract journals and other sources of bibliographic information. However interesting a journal paper may be to peers, the interval between reading and citation can be large, depending on the stage of investigations and the stage of the writing process. The time lag between publication of a cited paper and availability of citation data can be further increased by: - lengthy publication schedules for the citing paper; - any arrears in processing of citation data by Science Citation Index. For less prestigious journals this time lag is even further lengthened: secondary sources need time to produce and process bibliographic data, and citing authors may search for relevant literature long after bibliographic information has become available. Therefore we decided to postpone our impact study until some years after the start of the ven- 19157 ture and to confine it to papers that were at least one and a half years old by that time. In July 1988, we started analysing the citation yields for the full papers and synopses published in NJAS in 1984-1986 as well as factors influencing these yields. In this paper the results are reported and discussed. The results of an acceptance study among subscribers, authors and referees will be reported in a subsequent paper. 2 Materials and methods The Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science ( NJAS ) is a quarterly published in English by the Royal (Netherlands) Society for Agricultural Science. Since 1984 (Volume 33, No. 1 ) it comprises both full papers and synopses unrelated to these full papers. Of the roughly 1,600 subscriptions to NJAS, some 750 are distributed outside the Netherlands. The journal's scope is very broad (see Table 3). Because of the time lag between publication of the cited papers and processing of citation data by Science Citation Index (see Introduction) the search was confined to the full papers ( n = 94) and the synopses (n = 67) published in 1984-1986. SCISEARCH (the online version of Science Citation Inde.i ) was used to find the citations to papers that had been published in NJAS in that period. The search was carried out in July 1988. Citations found were classified into "autocita- tions" (citations by any one of the authors of the paper cited) and "allocitations" (citations by others), for full papers and synopses separately. ' 1 The citation yields are given in Table 1. From citation yields we calculated "citation quotes" (CQs, the average number of times the papers had been cited between time of publication and time of search; CQ~~~, CQall and CQ,,,, are We are aware of the neologistic nature of the terms "autoci- tations" and "allocitations." Garfield [2] and others use the term "self-citations," but we do not know of the opposite to that term. "Self-citations" and " alloci tat ions" would be lin- guistically unrelated, and "non-self-citations" not very elegant. Table 1 Citation yeld over the penod 1984-1988 ' of papers published m the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science (NJ AS). 1984-1986 ~ Citations recorded in SCISEARCH up to July 1988. b "autocitations" are citations by one of the authors of the cited paper; "allocitations" are citations by others. C "Citation quote" is the mean number of citation> over the penod between publication of the paper and our search in SCISEARCH, and hence varies among the years (see Sections 2 and 4.1). CQ,,.,, CQ~ii, CQlOt: citation quote for autocltatiom. allmtaUUns and all citations, respectively. 20158 Table 2 Impact factors for the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science, 1984-1986 a 1986: mean number of citations m 1986 to papers puhlished m 1984 + 1985. b 1987: mean number of citations in 1987 to papers published in 1985 + 1986. the CQ values for autocitations, allocitations and the total of all citations respectively; Table 1) as well as "impact factors" (IFs, the variable used by ISI/Science Citation Index; Table 2). From the values in Table 1 we concluded (1) that the course of the CQs was highly irregular and (2) that, on the average, the CQs were significantly lower for synopses than for full papers. The IF values (Table 2) pointed in the same direction. To explore these phenomena we decided to look into two readily measurable factors that could explain them, viz.: - relative contribution of the various disciplines to the journal's contents; - coverage by major bibliographic sources (abstract journals). IFs are based on citations in a particular year to papers published in the two previous years. Since IFs depart from the years of publication of both the cited paper and the citing source, and CQs from the year of publication of the cited paper only, these indices are hardly comparable. Because CQ and IF calculations were found to present similar pictures, as IF calculations would exclude a substantial number of citations to NJAS papers, and because CQ calculations enabled us to compare three years (1984, 1985, 1986) instead of two years (1986, 1987), we decided to use CQs for further analyses (see Section 4.1 for discussion). To study the influence of bibliographic coverage on citation yield we screened AGRIS (International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology), AGRICOLA (Agricultural Online Access), SCISEARCH, BIOSIS (online version of Biological A hstracts I RRM ), CABI (database of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International), CHEMABS (online counterpart of Chemical Ah.structs ) and FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts) for coverage of the papers. Since FSTA was found to have covered just 5 out of 161 papers and AGRICOLA had stopped covering NJAS as from 1985 (from that time coverage of Dutch agricultural journals was left to AGRIS) these sources were excluded from further analyses. The search was carried out in August 1988. The host organization through which the databases (SCISEARCH, AGRIS, AGRICOLA, BIOSIS, CABI, CHEMABS, FSTA) were consulted was DIMDI (Deutsches Institut fur Medizinische Dokumentation und Information). The results were subjected to log-linear analysis (discrete variables) and regression analysis (continuous variables) to detect effects of year (1984, 1985, 1986), type of paper (full paper, synopsis), type of citation (allocitation, autocitation), citing journal (NJAS, other journals), coverage, and first-order interactions with type of paper. 3 Results 3. ! 7 Citations Table I summarizes the citation yields over the period 1984-1988 for the NJAS papers published in 1984-1986. On average, the CQ values were significantly higher for full papers than for synopses. The I F values were also higher for full papers, both for papers cited in 1986 and for those cited in 1987 (Table 2). There was a significant citing journal x type of citation interaction (Table 1 ): by far the most of the citations in NJAS were autocitations (80% of the citations to full papers, 92% of those to synopses), whereas most of the citations in other journals were allocitations (72% and 75%, respectively). 21159 Fig. 1. Course of autocitations and of allocitations over the years, for full papers and synopses separately. Note: the period in which the papers could have been cited and processed by SCISEARCH vanes. The search in SCISEARCH was done in July 1988. The citation penod varies from 52 months (for papers published m the first 1984 issue) to 19 months (papers published in the last 1986 issue). So, the citation yields for years 2, 3 and 4 after publications are likely to be underestimates. Figure I shows that the course of autocitations differs significantly from the course of allocitations. On the average, the period between publication of the cited paper and publication of the citing paper was significantly longer (1.05 years longer) for allocitations than for autocitations. Since the differences in CQ values between full papers and synopses held for both autocitations and allocitations and it is the latter type of citation that reflects exogenous factors such as bibliographic coverage we decided to confine further analyses to allocitations. Analysis of the citation frequency of the NJAS papers revealed that 69 of the 94 full papers (73%) and 59 of the 67 synopses (88%) had not been cited at all by workers other than the authors (733%). ~.2 Jourtial contents To see if either the irregularity of CQs or the differences in CQ between full papers and synopses could be attributed to the relative contribution of the various disciplines to the journal's contents, we classified the papers into five categories largely represented in the journal, and a remaining group. Table 3 shows that the categories strongly varied in CQ III I . The relative contribution of the group of "good scorers" among these categories to the journal's contents fairly Table 3 Distribution of papers published in 1984-1986 in the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science over subdisciplines of agricultural science, and citation quotes " For "Citation quotes," CQall and CQ,,,,, see footnotes to Table 1. h "A ronom y composes several subdisciplines such as field crops and grassland science, horticulture, agrobiology and tro P ical crop science; "soil science" comprises sectors such as soil science, plant nutnUOn, soil chemistry and geology; "forestrv" comprises silviculture, forest management, landscape planning and nature management; "animal production" comprises such disciplines as animal breeding, animal husbandry and fish culture. C "Forestry" is generally poorly represented in the full paper section of NJAS. However, the 1985 volume happened to contain a special issue comprising nine papers devoted to this subject matter. 22160 Table 4 Coverage of papers published 1984-1986 in the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science by major international bibliographic databases '' Mean number of databases (out of five) covering the papers. well explains the capricious course of CQs ( p < 0.05), but not the difference in CQ values between full papers and synopses. 3.3 Bibliographic coverage The results of the coverage study are presented in Table 4. For the three-year period studied, as well as for all three years separately, coverage was better for full papers than for synopses ( p < 0.05). AGRIS and SCISEARCH were found to cover all papers, irrespective of subject matter or form of publication. CHEMABS' selection policy is apparently different from that of the other database producers mentioned: coverage was found to be fairly consistent with the scope of that database (chemistry). BIOSIS and CABI are supposed to cover a journal like NJAS integrally; restriction to specific disciplines could not satisfactorily explain variation in coverage. To find out to what extent coverage affects citation yields we classified the NJAS papers involved into four categories according to the number of databases that had covered the papers. Table 5 shows that the 21 papers (13%) covered by AGRIS and SCISEARCH only had not been cited at all in the period concerned, and that 22.0-26.9% of the papers covered by one or more of the other databases (CABI, BIOSIS, CHEMABS) had been cited at least once. Surprisingly, differences in citation yield (both percentage of papers cited and CQ all value) between categories 3, 4 and 5 (coverage by 3, 4 and 5 databases, respectively) were negligible. Logistic linear regression analysis showed that differences in bibliographic coverage were largely responsible for the differences in number of allocitations between full papers and synopses: the initial significant differences in number of allocitations (Table 1 ) were reduced by a factor of 3 and were no longer significant after correction for bibliographic coverage. 4 Discussion and conclusions We are aware of certain limitations of our study, which are primarily due to the modest citation scores for the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science (NJAS). A top journal in a high-tech sector of science would yield far more impressive figures. Information from the SCI Journal Citation Reports [11 indicates that the field of agriculture is not characterized by high IFs. (Although IFs are a questionable tool for measuring the long-term 23161 Table 5 Classification of papers published m the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science (total of full papers and synopses) according to coverage category ' a a Coverage by the databases AGRIS, SCISEARCH, BIOSIS, CABI and CHEMABS. Since AGRIS and SCISEARCH were the only databases with 100% coverage, Category 2 (covered by 2 databases) means: coverage by no database but AGRIS and SCISEARCH. papers cited by workers other than the author of the cited paper (allocitations only). penetrative capacity of papers in low- and medium-prestige journals (see 4.3), they are indicative.) The citation yields for NJAS papers could be further depressed by endogenous factors such as its very broad scope and its almost exclusively Dutch authorship. However, we have not investigated possible effects of these factors. The NJAS-Pudoc synopsis venture is unique (see Introduction) and offers the rare opportunity to compare the penetrative capacity of both kinds of primary papers aimed at the same audience. Modest as the citation scores are, statistical analyses showed that they are sufficiently high to serve that goal. 4. 1 Citations The decline of CQs with time (see Table 1 ) can be largely explained by the period between date of publication and date of search, which varied between 19 months (1986 No. 4) and 52 months (1984 No. 1 ). (The actual periods are even shorter, depending on publication delays for the citing journals, coverage arrears for SCISEARCH and, since allocitations primarily originate from authors who depend on bibliographic sources, arrears in the production of these sources.) Generally, autocitations peaked in the year of publication of the cited papers, whereas allocitations peaked two years later. Obviously, authors had started citing their own papers soon after or even before publication of the cited paper and stopped doing so one or two years later. In contrast, allocitations in the year of publication of the cited paper were rare; the cited papers had started being cited about one year after publication (Fig. 1). The "immediacy index" [3] (the mean number of citations in the year in which the papers were published) averaged over the three-year period was 0.20 and 0.14 for full papers and synopses, respectively, but as low as 0.02 and 0.00, respectively, when this index was confined to allocitations. The difference in course between autocitations and allocitations is not really surprising. Scientists do not depend on bibliographic sources if they desire to cite themselves. (It should be noticed that we use the term "autocitations" in a strict sense, viz. citations by one or more of the authors of the cited paper. In contrast, Moed's "self-cita- tions" or "in-house citations" [10] have a very broad meaning, viz. citations by authors working in the same "domain" (institution, university) as the cited authors.) The marked difference in time from publication of the cited paper to publication of the citing paper between autocitations and allocitations seems to support our initial assumption of a modest status of NJAS, viz. the majority of users of NJAS papers appear to rely on information retrieval rather than seeing the papers upon appearance. However, there are other factors that influence the time lag between appearance of the cited paper and onset of allocitations (see Section 1 ). Many citations to NJAS papers are excluded from IF calculations because they fall outside the two-year period considered by SCISEARCH: 5 of the 11 autocitations to full papers published in 1984 were cited in the year of publication, and 11 I of the 20 allocitations to these papers were cited more than two years after publication (Fig. 1 ). We felt free to choose our admittedly unconventional "citation quotes" as the index of penetrative capacity because we used citation scores to com- 24162 pare full papers with synopses published in the same journal rather than to compare NJAS with other journals. Since papers published in broad-scope agricultural journals like NJAS are generally not of a high-tech nature, and tend to be cited several years after publication, we doubt whether citation in the subsequent two years, as measured for IF calculations, is a very useful criterion for determining the penetrative capacity of this category of papers and journals. We searched only for citations to the published material and cannot exclude that some readers have cited the unpublished reports underlying the synopses. (Journals vary in strictness as to acceptance of references to unpublished material.) This may hold particularly for autocitations since all synopsis authors, unlike most of their peers, have the report at their disposal. Information on the report is printed under the synopsis in NJAS. Reports are available on request through the Netherlands Agricultural Report Depository or directly from the synopsis author. Readers who have obtained the report may have been unaware of the primary nature of the synopsis or have judged the three-page synopsis an insufficiently impressive publication to justify citation. So, the citation yields mentioned in Table 1 are realistic as to the printed synopses but may be underestimates for the investigations reported. 4.? Journal contents The relative contribution of "good scorers" among subdisciplines of agricultural science to the contents of particular journal volumes (Tables 3 and 4) does not satisfactorily explain the differences in citation scores between full papers and synopses. However, it does largely explain ( p < 0.05) the differences in CQ among the volumes, such as the low CQ for full papers for 1985 as compared to 1984 (Table 1). 4.3 Bibliographic coverage Although BIOSIS and CABI have a very broad scope, their coverage of the NJAS papers over the period in question is far from complete. We failed to detect any relation between coverage and subject matter reported. What we did find was a large degree of inconsistency and arbitrariness (Table 4). We may assume that some of BIOSIS' indexers were unfamiliar with the synopsis idea or have questioned the primary status of synopses: the synopsis sections of some issues have been covered entirely (1984 Nos. 1, 3 and 4, 1985 No. 4, 1986 Nos. 1 and 4), but those of the other issues of the period 1984-1986 have been left out completely. (AGRICOLA's style of coverage in the only year it covered NJAS was comparable to that of BIOSIS : the synopsis sections of three issues of 1984 (ii = 16) have been covered integrally, but another one ( ri = 10) has been omitted, so that the AGRICOLA coverage rate for full papers and synopses in 1984 was 100% and 61 % respectively.) The indexers' confusion about the primary status of the synopses is surprising since the NJAS synopses have all the features typical of primary papers: they have an abstract, a list of references and they are arranged similarly to the full papers published in NJAS, i.e. Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, Discussion. Moreover, many of them contain tables or graphs. So any confusion with secondary material such as abstracts must be considered unlikely. The picture is even less favourable for CABI. Synopsis sections have not been discarded systematically from that database. Coverage by CABI seems to be characterized by inattentiveness. For example, the first three synopses of 1985 No. 1 have been included, but the subsequent nine synopses in that issue have been omitted; the first fourteen full papers of 1986 No. 3 have been covered, but the last six have not. Some indexers must have left their office for lunch when they were halfway through an issue and forgotten about the rest when they returned! The 21 papers (13% of all papers) covered by AGRIS and SCISEARCH only had not been cited at all (Table 5), which suggests that the role of these databases in information retrieval routines is less prominent than that of CABI, CHEMABS and BIOSIS. Current Contents (the printed ISI product) is a most valuable current awareness source for scientists. However this does not necessarily hold for its online counterpart, SCISEARCH, which - apart from its role in impact studies - is used primarily for information retrieval rather than current awareness purposes. The modest effect of coverage of NJAS papers by SCISEARCH on citation yield could be explained by the facts that it is a relatively expensive source 25163 and that its informational content is comparatively poor (just title information, no abstracts or descriptors). Tables 1 and 5 show that the differences in citation yields among the respective years as well as the differences in yields between full papers and synopses are largely explained by differences in coverage rate. The low CQ for full papers published in 1984 (Table 1) corresponds fairly well with the low coverage rate for full papers in that year (Table 4). The coverage rate has been consistently lower for synopses than for full papers, and so has the CQ (except for 1985). The importance of reliable and complete bibliographic information depends on the nature and size of a scientific discipline. Workers in some "small" fields may take note of all relevant papers virtually immediately upon appearance of the issues of the few top journals in their field. In contrast, there is an abundance of journals in the field of agricultural science, many of which are country- or region-based. Most scientists in agriculture see only a few high-prestige journals upon appearance. Therefore, information retrieval through bibliographic sources is indispensable to most workers in agricultural science. The strong effect of coverage rate on citation yields, as shown by logistic linear regression analysis (see 3.3 ), confirms our assumption about the position of NJ,4S in its domain of science. The results of our analysis point at significantly lower citation figures for synopses. However, the difference in penetrative capacity between full papers and synopses published in NJAS is to be attributed largely to differences in bibliographic coverage. The bibliographic database producers involved should be alerted to their inconsistent and inattentive coverage procedures over the period in question (1984-1986). 4.4 Conclusions (1) The penetrative capacity of synopses published in the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science in the period 1984-1986 was significantly lower than that of full papers published in the journal in the same period, both for autocitations and for allocitations. (2) Differences in bibliographic coverage between full papers and synopses appear to be largely responsible for the lower CQ all for synopses. (3) An acceptance study (manuscript in pre- paration) should provide insight into readers' perceptions of the general prestige of synopses and could explain the modest difference in CQ.111 remaining after correction for bibliographic coverage. (4) The lower CQ .1ut for synopses may be attributable to authors' perceptions of the general prestige (and citability) of synopses or to a (supposed or real) lower average scientific quality and relevance of the synopses involved, or both. An acceptance study (manuscript in preparation) should shed light on authors' attitudes towards synopses. (5) Inattentive coverage procedures seriously undermine the penetrative capacity and meaning- fulness of papers published in journals whose users depend largely on reliable information retrieval facilities. (6) Scientists planning to report highly relevant research results should seek a prestigious journal in which to publish rather than depend on the diligence of bibliographic information producers. (7) There is strong divergence in penetrative capacity among the various subdisciplines of agricultural science. Editors of broad-scope journals who believe in high impact factors as an important selling argument for their journal should restrict the number of papers they publish on subjects with a known low impact. (8) The ISI-SCISEARCH impact factor may be a suitable measure of penetrative capacity for core journals, particularly those in a high-tech scientific environment, but it is far less so for determining the impact of less "hectic" branches of science such as most subdisciplines of agriculture. For these journals, citations should be recorded over an appreciably longer period of time than the two years considered by ISI-SCISEARCH. (9) It is the difference in course between allocitations and autocitations rather than the impact factor per se that is indicative of the prestige of a journal (Fig. 1). A considerable time lag between date of publication and onset of allocitations is suggestive of a modest position of a journal in its domain of science. (10) The results of this study do not throw serious doubts upon the potential of synopsis publishing as an attractive and cost-effective alternative to traditional publishing practices, provided indexers treat full papers and synopses alike - as they ought to do. 26164 References Ansi, American National Standard for Synoptics ANSI Z39.34-1977 (R1983) (American National Standards Institute , New York, 1977; reaffirmed 1983). D. Barr, Access to journal literature: short-term and long-term prospects, Aslib Proceedings 28(3) (1976) 116-119. E. Garfield, Citation indexing: its theory and application in science, technology, and humanities (Wiley, New York , 1979; reprinted by ISI Press, Philadelphia , 1983). D.G. van der Heij, Synopsis publishing for improving the accessibility of "grey" scholarly information, Journal of Information Science 11 (1985) 95-107. P.W. Lea, Alternative methods of journal publishing, Ashb Proceedmgs 31(1) ( 1979) 33-39. M.B. Line and B. Williams, Alternatives to conventional publications and their implications for libraries, Aslib Proceedings 28(3) ( 1976) 109-115. A.A. Manten , Possible future relevance of publishing primary scholarly information in the form of synopses, Journal of Information Science 1 (1980) 293-296. J. Martyn , Present and future pressures on service operators , Aslib Proceedings 28(10) 341-346. J.F.B. Rowland , Synopsis journals as seen by their authors , Journal of Documentation 37 (1981 ) 38-42. H.M. Moed , W.J.M. Burger, J.G. Frankfort and A.F.J. van Raan, The use of bibliometric data for the measurement of university research performance, Research Policy 14 ( 1985) 131-149. SCI Journal Citation Reports, Vol. 20 (Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, PA, 1986).</meta-value>
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<mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>Comparative analysis of the penetrative capacity of synopses and of full papers unrelated to the synopses published in the same broad-scope agricultural journal</title>
</titleInfo>
<titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>Comparative analysis of the penetrative capacity of synopses and of full papers unrelated to the synopses published in the same broad-scope agricultural journal</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Dirk G.</namePart>
<namePart type="family">van der Heij</namePart>
<affiliation>TNO-CIVO Toxicology and Nutrition Institute. Postbus 360, 3700 AJ Zeist, The Netherlands</affiliation>
</name>
<name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Jan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">van der Burg</namePart>
<affiliation>Pudoc (Centre for Agricultural Publishing and Documentation). Postbus 4, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands</affiliation>
</name>
<name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Ian R.C.</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Cressie</namePart>
<affiliation>Pudoc (Centre for Agricultural Publishing and Documentation). Postbus 4, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands</affiliation>
</name>
<name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Michel</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wedel</namePart>
<affiliation>TNO-CIVO Toxicology and Nutrition Institute. Postbus 360, 3700 AJ Zeist, The Netherlands</affiliation>
</name>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
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<originInfo><publisher>Sage Publications</publisher>
<place><placeTerm type="text">Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</placeTerm>
</place>
<dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">1990-06</dateIssued>
<copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">1990</copyrightDate>
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<abstract lang="en">As from 1984, synopses based on unpublished research reports have been published in the Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science (NJAS), in addition to full papers unre lated to the synopses. To study readers' behaviour towards the synopsis, which is still a relatively uncommon vehicle of primary communication, both full papers (n = 94) and synopses (n = 67) published in NJAS in 1984-1986 were subjected to citation analysis. Self-ci tations ("autocitations," as opposed to "allocitations") were excluded from most analyses. On average, citation yields were significantly lower for synopses than for full papers. The citation yields vaned strongly between the three years. The distribution of the journal's contents over the various subdisciplines of agricultural science explamed fairly well the capricious behaviour of citation yields over the years, but not the difference in yield between synopses and full papers. Further, the coverage of NJAS papers by five major biblio graphic databases was analysed. AGRIS and SCISEARCH covered NJAS' contents integrally. Thirteen percent of all papers (n = 21) covered by AGRIS and SCISEARCH only had not been cited at all. CHEMABS' coverage appeared to be fmrly consistent with the scope of this database (chemistry). However, BIOSIS' and CABI's coverage behaviour over the period in question appeared to be characterized by incon sistency and arbitrariness. Coverage by BIOSIS and CABI was significantly better for full papers than for synopses (BIOSIS 87% and 43%. and CABI 65% and 48%, respectively). After correction for bibliographic coverage the citation yield was still lower for synopses than for full papers, but the difference was no longer significant. Two-thirds of the initial difference in citation yield between full papers and synopses could be attributed to differences in bibliographic coverage. It is concluded that inconsistent bibliographic coverage procedures seriously undermine the penetrative capacity (and hence meaningfulness) of papers published in journals whose readers depend largely on bibliographic sources.</abstract>
<relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Journal of Information Science</title>
</titleInfo>
<genre type="journal">journal</genre>
<identifier type="ISSN">0165-5515</identifier>
<identifier type="eISSN">1741-6485</identifier>
<identifier type="PublisherID">JIS</identifier>
<identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spjis</identifier>
<part><date>1990</date>
<detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption>
<number>16</number>
</detail>
<detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption>
<number>3</number>
</detail>
<extent unit="pages"><start>155</start>
<end>164</end>
</extent>
</part>
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<identifier type="DOI">10.1177/016555159001600303</identifier>
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