CONCEPT SYMBOLIZATION OF CITED DOCUMENT - AN ANALYSIS ON MEDICAL JOURNAL ARTICLES

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''.