Like a Hurricane: A Citation Analysis of Emergency Management Scholarly Literature

Abstract

This bibliometric study used citation analysis to uncover citing characteristics in the burgeoning academic field of emergency management. Of the 281 degree programs listed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency nationwide, those at community colleges accounted for 17% of the total. Using the interdisciplinary database of Academic Search Complete, a sample of 5,099 citations was collected from 146 articles published between 2002 and 2012. The most strongly represented disciplines revealed by the analysis were Social Science, Science/Technology, and Medicine. A majority of citations (45%) came from academic journals, with nearly half (44%) of those from Social Science. When citing outside of their discipline, medical and science/technology journals cited most often from Social Science, 70% and 12%, respectively. This study also finds the 20 most frequently cited journals, which will be of help to collection development and subject librarians.

KEYWORDS:

• citation analysis
• emergency management
• hurricane
• Katrina
• interdisciplinary