authors read national literatures?

[Eugene Garfield]

You must make a distinction between scientists and physicians. To lump
them together is valid. You can tell from citation patterns of the
literature outside the US that researchers read and cite the US
literature. I just saw an analysis of citations to Lancet, Nature.
Science, e.g,. by Chinese journals.

It has often been claimed by Europeans that Americans do not read their
literature but I have never seen any proof of this. They were studies
long ago that showed that American physicians did not even cite British
journals, but again are we talking about research physicians or
clinicians. The latter have barely enough time to read their own
journals, whereever they are. However, the wide distribution of JAMA
worldwide would indicate otherwise. Best wishes Gretchen. Gene Garfield

-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
[mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Gretchen Whitney
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 8:53 PM
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: [SIGMETRICS] authors read national literatures?



greetings all,

 I have a vague recollection that a study (or studies) reported, perhaps
by analysis of lists of references in documents, that scientists
primarily read their national literatures, and did not stray frequently
into the literatures of other countries.  Is there any evidence of this?
Does this sound familiar to anyone?  What might I have read?  This could
be as old as some studies out of psychology in the 1970s.  I'm doing a
study of a subset of MEDLINE through DIALOG, and I'd like to be able to
assert that the values in the CP (country of publication) field reflect
what scientists in a given country READ, and the values in the CS
(author affiliation) field reflect what they experiment with and WRITE.
By analysis of these fields and titles/subjects, this assertion seems to
be supported because there is consitency in values regarding therapies
explored/supported/promoted from both fields.

In other words, there is consistency in both that enable me to assert
that country x is exploring y therapy, as opposed to country w exploring
z therapy.

Is there literature out there that supports the idea that scientists,
particularly physicians, read their national literatures predominantly,
and write in those intellectual domains?

I've already tried Tenopir/King, and it wasn't them.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  --gw

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Gretchen Whitney, PhD                                     tel
865.974.7919
School of Information Sciences                            fax
865.974.4967
University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA
gwhitney at utk.edu
http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/
jESSE:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html
SIGMETRICS:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
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