Croatian journals at the end of the 20 century - A bibliometric evaluation

There are in Croatia 241 journals appearing at least twice a year. They mak e for about 2/3 of those periodic publications whose contents are recorded in the Croatian Bibliography. Series B, contributions in journals and proce edings. Their scientific communicability (sci.comm.) was evaluated by four indicators: peer review, language, timeliness/regularity, and foreign autho rship; journals from the natural and applied-technical sciences (NT) faired considerably better than those from the social sciences and humanities (SH ). This dichotomy was also apparent in the 1990 to 1995 comparison. Althoug h there were no dramatic changes, the sci. comm. did improve, and more so f or the NT-journals. New SH-journals more frequently appeared and ceased. He nce, the criteria for decision making in science policy must not be identic al for all types of journals. The results of the sci. comm. evaluation by o ur method is congruent with the coverage of Croatian journals in the intern ational secondary information services. This flow into the "capillary" syst em of scientific information exchange leads to a reasonable "visibility" of Croatian journals via the ISI-journals.