N. Ushizawa, CONCEPT SYMBOLIZATION OF CITED DOCUMENT - AN ANALYSIS ON MEDICAL JOURNAL ARTICLES, Library and Information Science, (30), 1992, pp. 133-146
In order to explore how one particular scientific information can be p
assed from one researcher to another through citaion process, 258 pape
rs published in medical journals were reviewed, all of which cite, one
way or other, T. Kawasaki's original paper reporting Kawasaki disease
(MCLS). A thorough examination was made on these papers to determine t
he degree of application and interpretation of the original report on
these research papers. 1) There are some instances when the author's i
ntension was not clear whether he refers specifically to the Kawasaki'
s report or just states MCLS in general. 2) When several papers are ch
osen by the author for citation on a specific topic, it is often diffi
cult to tell from which paper the information comes, or all of these e
stablished papers contain the same information. 3) In some cases, the
paper accompanying a citation of the Kawasaki's report does not necess
arily reflect the original report's content. Also, a further examinati
on was carried out to confirm whether or not the Kawasaki's report is
cited repeatedly several times in single research paper. The 258 resea
rch papers quoting the Kawasaki's report are devided into 10 categorie
s, according to the clinical characteristics they represent. 79% of th
ese papers state that the Kawasaki paper is the first report introduci
ng MCLS in medical community, thus ''standard symbol''. 5 papers use t
he Kawasaki's report merely as a source of the disease, thus ''concept
symbol'' of MCLS. With these findings, I can assume that the discrepa
ncy between the interpretation of the Kawasaki's report in these resea
rch papers and the original report itself may arise from the fact that
the research papers later published may have been based on advanced k
nowledge or technology relating to MCLS, resulting the citation's tran
sformation from ''nonce symbol'' to ''concept symbol''.