Cited Reference Analysis in a National Laboratory to Assess Journal Usage

* This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE).

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Abstract

Librarians at a large, federally funded, multidisciplinary research organization sought to assess the value provided by the library’s collections. One method for capturing this value includes determining how well their library’s collections meet researcher needs, as expressed by the materials those researchers choose to cite in the production of new scholarly communications. A cited reference analysis was performed on the publications originating from the institution to provide the necessary data for the assessment, as well as to aid in the creation of a core list of journals which will inform future collection development efforts. This paper fills a gap in the library and information science literature by addressing the citation behaviors of researchers at a large multidisciplinary government research facility, a setting that has not been examined previously.

Keywords:

• Bibliometrics
• citation analysis
• cited references
• collection development
• government library
• special library

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to sincerely thank Brianne Dosch, Rebecca Tyler, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights and constructive feedback. The publisher acknowledges the US government license to provide public access under the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

Notes

* This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE).

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.