A bibliometric study of reference literature in the sciences and social sciences

In earlier papers the authors focused on differences in the ageing of journ al literature in science and the social sciences. It was shown that for sev eral fields and topics bibliometric standard indicators based on journal ar ticles need to be modified in order to provide valid results. In fields whe re monographs, books or reports are important means of scientific informati on. standard models of scientific communication are not reflected by journa l literature alone. To identify fields where the role of non-serial literat ure is considerable or critical in terms of bibliometric standard methods. the totality of the bibliographic citations indexed in the 1993 annual cumu lation of the SCI and SSCI databases, have been processed. The analysis is based on three indicators, the percentage of references to serials, the mea n references age, and the mean reference rate. Applications of these measur es at different levels of aggregation (i.e., to journals in selected scienc e and social science fields) lead to the following conclusions. 1. The perc entage of references to serials proved to be a sensitive measure to charact erise typical differences in the communication behaviour between the scienc es and the social sciences.'. However, there is an overlap zone which inclu des fields like mathematics, technology oriented science, and some social s cience areas. 3, In certain social sciences part of the information seems e ven to be originated in non-scientific sources: references to non-serials d o not always represent monographs, preprints or reports. Consequently, the model of information transfer from scientific literature to scientific (jou rnal) literature assumed by standard bibliometrics requires substantial rev ision before valid results can be expected through its application to socia l science areas. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.