CITATION RELATIONSHIPS AMONG MARINE BIOLOGY JOURNALS AND THOSE IN RELATED FIELDS

Simple quantitative indices of pair-wise journal citation relatedness (based on the numbers of references given to a journal and received fr om it, provided by the Science Citation Index database) can be transla ted by an automatic clustering procedure into a meaningful diagram ref lecting topical relatedness of journals within a field of science. Suc h a diagram was developed for 60 journals in marine and freshwater bio logy and related sciences, all published in 1987. The diagram reveals a tight cluster of marine biology journals quite distinct from the fre shwater biology journal cluster or the fisheries cluster. Hence, it do es not seem reasonable to regard marine, freshwater and fisheries jour nals as representing a single speciality as done in the Journal Citati on Reports of the Science Citation Index. The journals within the mari ne biology cluster and those with strongest pair-wise links with them can be regarded as the core journals in marine biology.