Anthropology Journals: What They Cite and What Cites Them

by EUGENE GARFIELD Institute for Scientific Information, 3501 Market St., University City Science Center, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, U.S.A. 8 I 83 Over the years, we have published a number of journal citation studies. These studies identify the significant journals of a given field. Recently we investigated journals in the earth sciences, neurosciences, and arts and humanities (Garfield 1982 a, b, c). In connection with the International Congress on Anthropology being held in Vancouver, we decided to study anthropology journals indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Indexg (SSCI'). So we have identified some of the "core" journals in the field and examined how these core journals cite one another. According to A. L. Kroeber, editor of Anthropology Today, anthropology is "a science devoted to the study of man, the study of differences and similarities of all aspects of the life of man without limitation in time and space" (Li 1980: 136). The field has two major branches. Physical anthropology examines the origins of the human species and physical variations within it. Cultural anthropology is concerned with human behavior and its "artifacts"-material objects, social systems, religious beliefs, language, etc. (Kardiner 1980). A diverse group of disciplines is related to the general heading of cultural anthropology-linguistics, ethnology, ethnography, social anthropology, and applied anthropology, to name only a few. The term "anthropology" is derived from a combination of the Greek anthropos, meaning "man," and the ubiquitous logos, denoting, in this case, "account" (Kardiner 1980). It first came into use during the Renaissance. Writers at that time defined anthropology in a variety of ways, for example, as "a description of the body and soul" and "the laws of their union" or as "the history of human nature" (White 1964). Physical anthropology has its origins in the work of eighteenth-century naturalists. Cultural anthropology can be traced to the compendia of customs produced by European social philosophers and other scholars during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the late nineteenth century, anthropologists had begun to produce influential theoretical works using evolutionary theory as a unifying frame of reference. In addition, much work in the field was sponsored by museums interested in expanding their collections. It was at this point that scientific societies and journals bearing anthropological titles began to appear (White 1964). The oldest anthropology journals indexed in the SSCI and included in this study were in fact founded during this era. They are Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde (Contributions to Linguistics, Geography, and Ethnology), established in Holland in 1853; Bulletins et Memoires de la Socie'te' d'Anthropologie de Paris, first published in 1860; and Zeitschrift fiur Ethnologie, founded in Germany in 1865. As you can see, anthropology is an old and international field. Table 1 lists the 41 "core" anthropology journals included in this study, along with their first dates of publication. The list certainly does not include every anthropology journal pub-