Bibliometric Analysis of Rural Sociology / Sociology and Space from 1963 - 2012

Abstract

A scientific journal is a mediator of research results and theoretical insights in the relevant scientific community. Continued publishing of a journal for over 50 years shows both the status of the scientific community and the importance of the journal's subject matter. The bibliometric analysis done in this research shows the specificities in scholarly communication by observing the development of the journal Rural Sociology / Sociology and Space (n= 1,168) through its different characteristics such as journal organisation and classification, types of published items, authorship, authors' addresses and cited publications (n= 9,563) gathered from a subset of 676 papers. The median references age was approximately seven years for journal papers and ten years for books. Median number of references per paper grew from 6 in the period 1963-1997 to 22 in the period 1998-2012. Citation analysis has shown that books have become less important (35, 5% of the citations), in comparison with earlier research (Nederhof, 2006). The communicability of authors towards relevant international communities is shown in their international references. The citation data gained from WoS citation indices demonstrate the international visibility of this journal. © 2013 Institute for Social Research in Zagreb - All rights reserved.