. Firoozeh Zare‑Farashbandi; . Parastoo Parsaei Mohammadi
Volume 4, Issue 4 , August 2014, , Pages 1-8
Abstract
Introduction: One of the methods of identifying core and popular resources is by citationevaluation. Using citation evaluation, the librarians of the Acquisition Department can usequantitative ...
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Introduction: One of the methods of identifying core and popular resources is by citationevaluation. Using citation evaluation, the librarians of the Acquisition Department can usequantitative methods to indentify core and popular resources among numerous informationresources and make serious savings in the library’s budget, by acquiring these core resourcesand eliminating useless ones. The aim of this study is assessing literature obsolescenceand core journals’ cost‑benefit in citations of the ‘Scientific Medical Journal of Ahwaz’.Materials and Methods: This study is a descriptive and cross‑sectional survey that usescitation analysis. Sampling is objective sampling from all documents from years 1364 (1985)to 1385 (2006), and the population comprises of 6342 citations of the articles published in‘Scientific Medical Journal of Ahwaz’. Data collection is done through referring to the originaldocuments and the data is analyzed using the Excel software, and for descriptive and analyticalstatistics the cost‑benefit formula and Bradford law formula are used. Results: Findings showedthat the average citation for each document in the ‘Scientific Medical Journal of Ahwaz’ was15.81. The average citation to international sources was 14.37, and the average citation tonational sources was 1.44. The literature obsolescence of Farsi documents in this study was15 years, while it was equal to 20 years for English documents. The highly cited Farsi journalswere (sorted based on citation in descending order): ‘Scientific Medical Journal of Ahwaz’,‘Daroudarman’, ‘Nabz,’ and ‘Journal of Medical School, Shahid Beheshti University of MedicalSciences’. The highly cited English journals were (sorted based on citation in descending order):‘Pediatrics’, ‘The New England Journal of Medicine’, ‘Gastroenterology’ and ‘Medicine’. All ofthese four journals are part of the ISI database and have good impact factors in the JournalCitation Reports (JCR). Also their cost‑benefit was reasonable based on the frequency of theiruse. Conclusion: The authors of the investigated journal were more inclined to use internationalreferences. The resources used by theauthors of this journal are relatively obsoleteand the authors ought to use more up‑to‑dateresources. The subscription for high citationEnglish and Farsi journals is still available inthis university. Also the authors of this journalhave used accredited ISI journals as theirresource, which is a sign of the credibilityfor the ‘Scientific Medical Journal of Ahwaz’.