Beyond the humanities: a comparison of two bibliometric crises in the domain of Soviet biological periodicals (1917–1950)

Abstract

A bibliometric crisis is defined as a more or less marked decline of basic bibliometric indicators interrupting a preceding period of stable growth or stagnation. The crises of 1930–1931 and 1941–1942 revealed from previous studies [Kozhevnikov, A. B., & Petrosova, A. G. (1991). Nauchnaia periodika v SSSR (1917–1949): kolichestvennyi analiz [Scientific periodicals in the USSR (1917–1949): A quantitative analysis]. Voprosy istorii yestestvoznaniya i tekhniki (4), 44–50] were analyzed in depth on the basis of data on the publication of biological serials in the USSR from 1917 through 1949. A set of more detailed data on selected journals covering the period from 1921 through 1958 are also analyzed. It is shown that even though the scale of the decline in 1930–1931 was comparable to that of 1941–1942, the fine structure of the two crises and their impact on the continuity of the corpus of biological serials were different. The application of the logistic growth model to the analysis of the publication of scholarly serials is discussed. It is argued that, for the purposes of our analysis, momentary data are more indicative than cumulative ones. The analytic framework developed within this project can be applied to other domains of the system of scholarly and scientific periodicals as more data sets will be compiled.