Citation patterns of the cardiovascular serial literature

In an attempt to further amplify the characteristics of the cardiovascular serial literature, citation patterns were studied. As previously shown, one‐third of the 5,860 papers from the National Heart Institute grantees for 1967 appeared within 13 journals (3). After the exclusion of the abstract journals, the remaining journals were used to obtain a basic pool of 300 cardiovascular related articles. Science Citation Index was used to gather statistics relative to citing author, journal and year. The 300 articles in the basic pool were cited a total of 2,545 times during this four‐year period (1967‐1970). The figures concerning citation rate by year serve to uphold the idea that journal citation reaches a peak during the third year after publication. Also some definite patterns of self‐citation were noted. It was found that, when analyzed on the basis of first author, 15 percent of the 2,545 citations were self‐citations. The ten basic journals tend to be cited mostly within themselves; one‐third of the citations were found in these journals. Although the citations were found throughout 349 journals, indicating an extensive scatter, a relatively high percentage of papers were found in few journals.