Quantitative assessment of academic value and demand of journals and determination of core journals for a discipline
| Published date | 11 November 2019 |
| Pages | 601-610 |
| Date | 11 November 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-02-2019-0008 |
| Author | Gui Ling Sui,Bin Yao |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Hr in libraries,Library strategy,Library promotion |
Quantitative assessment
of academic value and demand of
journals and determination of
core journals for a discipline
Gui Ling Sui
Library Department, Jilin University, Changchun, China, and
Bin Yao
College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, China
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach of quantitative assessment of academic value
and demand of journals for a discipline.
Design/methodology/approach –This study defines relative citation rate (RCR) and utilization rate (UR)
of journals cited by a discipline with a case of inorganic chemistry discipline in Jilin University, ranks the
journals in decreasing order of RCR and UR, and analyzes the RCR and UR curves with mathematical
statistics and physics.
Findings –The RCR and UR curves can be expressed as: RCR(n)¼N1exp(−n/t(N1))+N2exp(−n/t
(N2))¼64.54exp(−n/1.98)+31.14exp(−n/23.11) and UR(n)¼Y1exp(−n/t(Y1))+Y2exp(−n/t(Y2))¼85.06exp(−n/
108.6)+12.94exp(−n/705.8). The parameters t(N1), t(N2), t(Y1) and t(Y2) can be used to assess quantitatively
academica value and demand of journal for a disciplineandtodeterminecorejournalsofthediscipline.
Research limitations/implications –This approach is used to quantitatively assess academic value and
demand of journals for a discipline.
Practical implications –This approach may provide useful information for journal management of library.
Originality/value –The present work is original.
Keywords Citation, Bibliometrics, Library, Demand of journals, Relative citation rate ranking,
Utilization rate ranking
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Library, as reference and information center, is an important supporting branch of discipline
construction in university. It has been one of the important tasks of library to satisfy needs
of disciplines for journals. However, since the number of journals is very large while the
fund is limited, it is impossible to purchase all journals for any library. Therefore, it is
necessary to figure out the journals needed by a discipline, assess their academic value and
classify or rank them based on their academic value and demand for plan and construction
of journal resource of library.
In the past, we usually adopted a simple form of survey to investigate journals needed by
a discipline and evaluate their academic value. However, we failed to get accurate results
with this method due to following reasons: it is always partial teachers and students of a
discipline to take part in the survey; the needed journals are different for teachers with
different research directions, resulting in that we do not know what journals the discipline
needs exactly.
In the recent years, many scholars began to figure out journals needed by teachers of a
discipline and students and assess academic value of the journals with citation analysis
method (Vallmitjana and Sabate, 2008; Sam and Tackie, 2007; Qi, 2003; Wang and Wang, Library Management
Vol. 40 No. 8/9, 2019
pp. 601-610
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0143-5124
DOI 10.1108/LM-02-2019-0008
Received 8 February 2019
Revised 1 July 2019
Accepted 4 July 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-5124.htm
This work was supported by the Department of Culture in Jilin province (Grant No. WK2018C136).
601
Quantitative
assessment of
academic
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