Informetric analysis of the international impact of scientific journals: how "international" are the international journals?

By developing a methodology for on-line citation analysis, the international characteristics of scientific journals have been analysed on the basis of correlations between the geographical distribution patterns of authors, citations and subscriptions. The study covered seven selected LIS journals. Assuming that the numbers of authors and citations in each geographical region follow the Poisson distribution, the hypothesis was tested, that the intensities are proportional to the subscriptions. In most cases the correlation between authors and citations was so positive that the international visibility and impact of the scientific journals can be defined by these two variables. As regards the distribution pattern of subscribers, authors and citations, however, the test showed very weak or no correlations. The analysis of the statistical significance of differences gave some useful data, the importance of which to marketing and publishing strategies is obvious. The paper suggests examining also the knowledge export of journals as an additional criterion for the evaluation of their impact, and the quality of research published in them. The comparison of Journal Impact Factors (JIF) is another contribution of this study, aimed to enhance the use of impact factor analysis with various time intervals. We demonstrate new and flexible ways of using the JIF for diachronous and synchronous analyses. The study brings new dimensions to the discussions of the impact, status and image of scientific journals. It focuses on the utilisation of informetric analysis to go beyond the simplistic use of the JIF and to get a deeper understanding of the "real" impact of international scientific journals and their market.