Monographic References and Information Science Journal Literature

Abstract The growing availability of full-text databases in the journal literature may eventually make it possible to perform automated citation analysis involving end-of-article references. This study explored the feasibility of automatically identifying and analyzing end-of-article monographic references in full-text databases for use in citation studies. Specific objectives were to (a) manually identify end-of-article references to a subset of monographic publications in 1987–1990 issues of three information science journals ( IPM, JASIS, JD ), to obtain insights relevant to the feasibility of applying automated methods; (b) verify the manual identification from the 1989–1990 issues of the journal with the highest number of references, i.e., IPM , by noting the monographic status coded in corresponding records in the OCLC bibliographic database; and (c) analyze the verified end-of-article references for more frequently appearing authors, titles, publication dates, and subjects. Citation patterns emerged from the limited manual analysis of 1989–1990 IPM issues, but more extensive studies should be undertaken using less time-consuming methods. The experience of conducting this exploratory study has suggested that the feasibility of automated identification and analysis of end-of-article references in full-text databases depends on establishment of the following: (a) a more complete source of monographic subject content information, and (b) uniform full-text publication style manual directions that would specify fields in which authors could structure and enhance end-of-article monographic reference content for retrieval purposes.