Bibliometric Study of the Coverage and Overlap of Journals Indexed by Four Abstracting and Indexing Services in Library and Information Science

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article presents an analysis of coverage and overlap of 1601 scholarly journals, magazines and trade journals indexed by four English language bibliographic databases, namely Library, Information Science and Technology s (LISTA), Library Literature and Information Science Index (LLISI), Information Science and Technology s (ISTA) and Library and Information Science s (LISA). The findings indicate that the highest number of titles is indexed by LISTA followed by LLISI, LISA and ISTA. Of the 1601 titles, 1053 (65.8%) titles are scholarly journals followed by trade journals (25.2%) and magazines (9%). Number of countries from which journals are indexed differs for each database. Among all four databases, the highest number of indexed titles was from the USA and the UK, respectively. Commercial publishers contributed the highest number of titles indexed by the four databases. Individual count of titles indicates that a total of 1,601 titles are indexed by four databases. However, the actual number of titles indexed is found to be 977, when all the titles in four databases are merged together. Of the 977 titles, 42 (4.3%) titles overlapped in all four databases, while 116 (11.9%) overlapped in three databases. The highest 259 (26.5%) titles overlapped in two databases and the remaining 560 titles are unique among the four databases.