The author's effect of showcasing in the journal literature of natural sciences. Indexed-formai and real-total reference stock of physics articles

Abstract

The indexed-formai reference stock of natural sciences - especially physics - journal articles is generally not the same as the real-total reference stock of the articles: the real stock is not rarely one orter of magnitude greater than the indexed stock. At the same time, even the real-total reference stock is only a part of the literature on the subject which is relevant in the broader or narrower sense, that is, which can or should be erted. The immediate cause of this two-fold difference which has become a general phenomenon in our century is the subjective author"s effect of „showcasing". The two-phase effect is the action of the author, as publishing researcher, barely restricted at all in its subjectiveness, in which he is first of all obliged to select the sources of knowledge to which he wishes to refer from the vast body of literature which has become far too great for itemized reference, and then, in a second phase, he decides which of the selected sources of knowledge he will cite „formally" in an directitemized reference, and which „non-formally" in an indirect or non-itemized way. As evidenced by its published traces, the first phase of the effect already existed in the journal literature of natural sciences in the thirties and since then has operated in the articles of all disciplines where the literature of a subject researched exceeds the limitations of space for itemized referencing. However, the second phase operates in the articles, whose author, as the result of a personal decision, exercises one or both of the actual but now non-indexed modes of reference: he uses the method of eponymal referencing and/or the technique of indirect-collective referencing. As a consequence of the operation of the second phase of the effect and the method used by the Citation Indexes, today not all real references result the visible presence in the (citedness) showcase of science. When using the data of the Indexes for various purposes or evaluating the findings of the literature of „citation analysis" and „scientometrics" based on the data of the Indexes, it must (should) be taken into account that the stock of indexed references in the journal literature of natural sciences is only a (smaller) part of the real stock of references; that the indexed literature citedness is not ídentical with the real citedness; that the Citation Indexes are not suitable for the measurement of real literature citedness.