Pattern of reference types and impact factors of journals in the Korea Citation Index according to academic discipline

Abstract

The Korea Citation Index (KCI) is a citation database for scholarly journals from Korea, the number of journals of which is 2,168 in January, 2015. This article aims to analyze the pattern of reference types and impact factors of journals in the KCI according to academic discipline. Journals of the KCI were classified according to academic discipline: humanities, arts and sports, social science, science, and multi-disciplinary science. Science journals were sub-classified as natural science, engineering, agriculture & fisheries, and medical health. The pattern of reference types was classified as journal article, book, report/thesis/internet, and others. Changing patterns of the two-year impact factor were described according to the publication year of journals in each discipline. The reference type of each discipline in 2010 showed different patterns. In humanities, the portion of books out of cited literatures was 51.1%, while the portion of books in natural science, engineering, medical health, and agriculture & fisheries fields were 11.0%, 10.0%, 7.0%, and 11.0%, respectively. In social science, the portion of journal articles was 53.1% and books 27.3%. In medical health, the portion of journal article was 87.6%. Journals’ average impact factors in 2011 were 0.9 for social science, 0.8 for arts and sports, 0.55 for interdisciplinary, 0.5 for agriculture and fisheries and humanities, 0.45 for natural science, 0.32 for engineering, and 0.3 for medical health. Researchers in humanities in Korea use books as a primary source of references, while those in other disciplines use journals as a major source of references. Higher impact factors in social science journals and lower ones in science journals mean that social scientists in Korea deal with mainly domestic topics, while scientist deal with global topics.