There's an interesting article in this week's Economist discussing citations in the context of e-journals:
"as more journals become available online, fewer articles are being cited in the reference lists of the research papers published within them and those articles that do get a mention tend to have been recently published themselves". Also "for every additional year of back-issues of a journal available online, the average age of the articles cited from that journal fell by a month. He also found a fall, once a journal was online, in the number of papers in it that got any citations at all."
The story is based on a report in Science ("Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship" James A. Evans Science 18 July 2008: 395-399 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/321/5887/395), but if you don't have access the Economist article (Digital Libraries: Great minds think (too much) alike - Is the web narrowing scientists' expertise?) is online at:
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11745514&subjectID=348963&fsrc=nwl
Alison
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Alison McNab
LIS Co-ordinator, Higher Education Academy - Information and Computer Sciences
Loughborough University, Loughborough England LE11 3TU
Email: [log in to unmask]
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