Mechanization of Library Procedures in the Medium-sized Medical Library VII. Relevancy of Cited Articles in Citation Indexing

摘要

Science Citation Index is one of a number of indexes based on the assumption that the papers cited by one author refer to work which is relevant to the subject discussed by the author citing them. Cleverdon, however, has questioned that assumption, and it was to test the assumption that this research was undertaken. An attempt was made to determine what percent of articles cited were related to the citing article. The conclusion reached was that in the field of medicine approximately 72 percent of the cited papers were considered related to the original paper by the authors of the original, thus apparently bearing out the assumption for citation indexing.