1. Analysis of the Quality of the UK Science Base (UK Office of Science and Technology London in press). 2. European Report on Science and Technology Indicators 1994 (European Commission Publications Luxembourg 1994). 3. H. Moore Ed. World Science Report 1996 (Unesco Paris 1994).
2. Katz J. S., et al., The Changing Shape of British Science (Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Sussex, UK, October, 1995);
3. 5. Australian Science: Performance from Published Papers (Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1996).
4. The ISI database has many acknowledged biases and limitations. Some problems have to do with the compilation of the database. It includes citations of books and chapters in edited books but it does not include the citations in such publications. Other publications such as government and other agency reports and working papers are essentially omitted. It does not cover all significant scientific journals [for example many Australian journals are not covered (5)]. Journals from non-English-speaking countries are not as well represented as those from English-speaking countries. There are problems with shifting definitions of countries (for example the breakup of the USSR); the ISI database preserves the 1981 list of countries through time ignoring changes in boundaries. Other problems are associated with citation patterns. Papers that describe technical methods may attract thousands of reflexive citations while pathbreaking papers may be cited only slightly for many years. Review articles can mask the primary papers they review. Citation patterns vary among fields (for example average citation rates are far higher in molecular biology and genetics than in materials science). Spectacular scientific errors may attract many citations although we think this may distort overall counts less than is sometimes suggested; interesting errors can moreover spark new ideas and developments in science. Self-citation (which accounts for at least 10% of all citations) may bias some of the results. For a more detailed discussion of these questions see (2) (5) and E. Garfield Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Application in Science Technology and Humanities (Wiley New York 1979).
5. The ISI database covers some additional fields of social science but [following (5)] these are omitted from our analysis.