Numerous studies provide data on the relative proportion of journal to non-journal forms of publishing. In their analysis of social science co-citation clusters, Small and Crane (1979) found that 39 per cent of items cited in sociology and 24.5 per cent in economics were books, compared with only 0.9 per cent in high-energy physics. Based on these results, Hicks (1999) estimated that between 40 and 60 per cent of the literature in the social sciences is composed of books. In addition, Leydesdorff (2003) found that whereas 79 per cent of citations in articles covered by the Science Citation Index (SCI) were citations of other articles in the database, this percentage was only 45 per cent for the SSCI (a database produced by Thomson Reuters together with the SCI and the A&HCI). Glänzel and Schoepfl in (1999) found that the percentage of references to serials varied between 35 per cent in history, philosophy of science and the social sciences and 94 per cent in immunology.
Despite the globalization of research in general, and of research collaboration in particular, peripheral regions have not become better integrated into the world social science system over the past two decades. This means that the Western dominance of social science remains a pertinent issue. Social science dominated by just a few regions runs the risk of diminishing intellectual novelty and excluding less favoured researchers from agenda-setting discourses on ‘issues of global relevance’.
Bibliometric analysis is a means to identify prominent researchers, important research results, and institutions that foster good research. The data banks are used as a tool for the evaluation of research as it is reflected in publications and for studies of communication patterns. For this purpose so-called bibliometric indicators have been constructed.
