Library and Information Science

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate quantitatively, as well as qualitatively, the significance of Japanese scientific journals published in the Western languages (hereafter called “Japanese journals”), to develop the evaluation method of journals, and to compare the output of the Japanese scientific research with the international ones using the number of citations.

A total of 270 “Japanese journals” in the fields of natural, medical, and agricultural sciences, are chosen out of Directory of Japanese Scientific Periodicals 1974 compiled by the National Diet Library. They are 6.7% of all Japanese periodicals and occupy 14.7% of scientific periodicals which include original articles. As the criteria for the significance of scientific journals, the author applies the following 4 mesurements; “impact factor,” “immediacy index,” “the number of articles,” and “holdings in major libraries.” Journal citation data are provided from the Institute for Scientific Information, Journal Citation Report 1975 (JCR).

Of the total of 270 “Japanese journals,” 40 are listed in JCR. They are examined by the above 4 criteria. As the result of examinations, the following 7 “Japanese journals” are evaluated as most significant; Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, Progress of Theoretical Physics, Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan, Journal of Biochemistry, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Bulletin, Journal of Antibiotics, Agricultural and Biological Chemistry.

In comparison with significant foreign scientific journals in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, agriculture, medicine and cancer research, it is found from the J-graph analysis that the rank of “Japanese journals” in the fields of physics, chemistry, and agriculture are relatively high, but that the rank of “Japanese journals” in the medical field is low.