The anatomy of the International Journal of Materials Research1 in the light of bibliometry

Abstract

Abstract Bibliometric methods, in particular citation analysis, are used to evaluate the International Journal of Materials Research (IJMR) and its two predecessor journals Zeitschrift für Metallkunde (ZfM) and Internationale Zeitschrift für Metallographie (IZfM). Firstly, the coverage of the journals by the various literature databases is discussed and the number of articles per year is determined. The time evolution of the publications with respect to German and English as original languages is established and the language dependent impact is analyzed. A ranking of the most important countries of authors is given. Furthermore, the ensemble of ZfM and IJMR articles is analyzed with respect to the occurrence of substances (metals, alloys, compounds) and some subject specific terms (diffusion, microstructure, recrystallization, mechanical properties). A listing of the twenty most frequently cited articles and the citation time evolution (citation history) of the top three articles are presented. Moreover, the distribution of the citations on the articles is determined and the amount of simultaneous citations with other journals (co-citations) is given. The citing papers of the IJMR and ZfM articles are analyzed with respect to the most frequently appearing countries of authors and journals. Finally, the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), the Cited Half-Life and the Citing Half-Life as bibliometric indicators of a journal as a whole are analyzed. The meaning of the widely used JIF is discussed and hints for its careful and cautious use are given.