Seven lean years. Deterioration of the information supply of sciences in Hungary between 1978 and 1985, through the example of foreign journal acquisition in four life science disciplines

Abstract

Journal availability in Hungary is considered for the period 1978- 1985, in four life science disci-plines: biochemistry, immunology, neurobiology and pharmacology. A comparison has been carried out with the world literature based on the journal lists by subject areas of Science Citation Index. The authors measured information supply by the number of journal papers. It was found that the availability was poor in 1978 already, and to keep the level of 1978, 30 to 70 percent more papers should have been acquired in 1985 than the actual figure was. In about 80 percent of libraries 10 percent of the subject areas information is missing. Subscription for leading journals has been reduced more than the average.