Türkiye’nin Bilimsel Yayın Haritası: Türkiye’de Dergi Yayıncılığı Üzerine Bir Araştırma

Abstract

According to the latest data available from the Statistics Institute of Turkey, there are currently about 2,500 journals and newspapers published regularly. Yet studies on periodicals are limited with publications of journal catalogs and guides. Studies based on the analytical investigation of articles appeared in those journals are scarce. Findings of such studies are important because they will not only help identify longitudinal trends with regards to scientific publishing in a country, but also will reveal the bibliometric features of articles that appear in scientific and professional journals in various subjects. This project aimed to conduct a detailed bibliometric investigation of articles along with their subjects and authors that were published in periodicals that appeared between 1923 and 1999 with a view to contribute to the mapping of science and creating a science and technology “road map” in Turkey. Data were gathered through the Bibliography of Articles of the Republican Era1923-1999 (BARE)that was recently published on CD-ROM by the Turkish National Library. Records belonging to a total of 566,627 articles were transferred to a statistical software package (SPSS) to study the bibliometric characteristics thereof. The scatter of articles to journals and the author productivity were tested to see if they fit Bradford and Lotka laws. Words that were used most frequently in article titles were identified. Human-computer interaction (HCI) issues and the usability criteria seem to have not been taken into account when designing the user interface of the BARE CD-ROM. Designers did not seem to carry out a comprehensive systems analysis study before designing the database and they did not take into account the principles of database management design. Nine percent of the records contained errors in article and journal titles as well as authors’ names. Two-thirds of authors articles indexed in BARE are of technology and social sciences. Biomedical articles constitute of one fifth of all articles. An overwhelming majority of articles were authored by a single author. Scatter of articles did not fit the Bradford Law, the 80/20 rule, and the Price Law. Yet, a relatively few “core” journal titles in each subject contained a significant percentage of all articles published in that subject. The most productive authors in each subject were also identified. Author productivity data in some disciplines (technology, fine arts, literature and rhetorics, and geography and history) did not fit the Lotka Law. Lotka’s αvalues ranged between 2.03 and 2.55 for various subjects. This study provides long-term bibliometric data on articles published in Turkish journals. Bibliometric findings obtained will, we hope, pave the way for further and more comprehensive studies on related subjects, contribute to the creation of the science and technology road map of Turkey and the development of collection management policies in libraries. Project report ends with some recommendations based on findings.