Characteristics of tropical fisheries literature

Abstract

Recently we made a search of the computer databases Scisearch and Social Scisearch of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia, U.S.A. to measure the impact of ICLARM's literature. These databases can tell you who has been citing a scientific paper you have published, as long as the article and its citations appear in a "core" body of some 4,000 scientific journals. The "core" journals are those most frequently cited by the world's scientific community. The database also includes a number of con ference proceedings, monographs and multiauthored books. Citation analysis within this "core" literature is often used to measure the performance of a particular paper or of an author or an institution. Citation analysis is used to measure the per formance of candidates for university appointments; it is used as the basis for inclusion in "Who's who" in the field of economics. There are many caveats in simple numerical citation analysis; for example, a paper may be cited often to refute its contents. As a whole, fisheries do not constitute a significant subject area within the "core" literature. Only one journal, the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, appears in ISI's top 300 cited or impact journals. An analysis by ISI of 15 "core" marine biology journals in 1977 revealed that less than half the references cited by authors in those journals were within the "core" literature. The analysis further revealed that there is no marine biology literature per se. Instead an "aquatic science" discipline seems more appropriate.