The adequacy of the science citation index (SCI) as an indicator of international scientific activity

Abstract

AbstractThe adequacy of the Science Citation Index (SCI) as a data source for developing indicators of international scientific activity was tested by comparing country‐by‐country journal counts based on the SCI with British Library Lending Division country‐by‐country journal counts, and with country‐by‐country counts of papers in other abstracting services, and by looking at the patterns of references from key journals. While the SCI appears to be an excellent, internationally balanced data source for the core of the physical and biological sciences, particularly for the English‐speaking countries, there still are significant differences between the SCI and other sources in national coverage of fields with a more dispersed literature, especially in the case of journals from countries with non‐Roman alphabets. In particular, SCI coverage of the Soviet literature appears incomplete, especially in the biological and medical sciences.