Bibliopub - The Library Data Source

General

2 surveys, 1 conducted in 1973 (sample size: 300; responding: 259 or 86.3%) and then repeated in 1978 (sample size: 429; responding: 357 or 83.2%) of ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) academic librarians concerning professional reading showed thatthe 4 most frequently read journals in each of the 2 surveys were as follows:

IN 1973 READ BY

American Libraries 90.0% of sample

College and Research Libraries 86.1% of sample

Library Journal 69.9% of sample

Library Resources and Technical Services 57.9% of sample

IN 1978 READ BY

American Libraries 92.2% of sample

College and Research Libraries 88.6% of sample

Library Journal 69.3% of sample

Journal of Academic Librarianship 44.0% of sample (Source)

Academic

A study reported in 1964 of journal circulation in the Columbia and Yale Medical libraries during a 6-month period for Columbia and a 1-year period for Yale [total circulation not given] showed thatthe 6 most frequently used journal titles were:

Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 238 uses

Journal of Biological Chemistry 206 uses

American Journal of Medicine 169 uses

Nature 167 uses

Lancet 157 uses

New England Journal of Medicine 145 uses (Source)

A 1973 survey of physicists in 6 universities of the greater Boston area (Boston University, Brandeis, Brown, Harvard, MIT, and Northeastern) to determine how they meet their information needs (sample size: 339; responding: 179 or 52.8%) showed thatthe 3 most frequently reported journals scanned weekly by 179 responding physicists were Physics Review Letters (73 or 40.8% respondents), Physics Reviews (66 or 36.9% respondents), and Physics Letters (30 or 16.8% respondents). Although in a different order, these were also the 3 journals which physicists ranked most important. (Source)

IN 1973 READ BY

American Libraries 90.0% of sample

College and Research Libraries 86.1% of sample

Library Journal 69.9% of sample

Library Resources and Technical Services 57.9% of sample

IN 1978 READ BY

American Libraries 92.2% of sample

College and Research Libraries 88.6% of sample

Library Journal 69.3% of sample

Journal of Academic Librarianship 44.0% of sample (Source)

A 1977 study at the University of Illinois Law Library of periodical usage over a 3-month period (275 periodicals, all indexed in 1977 Index to Legal Periodicals; 90% of the data came from in-house use, although reserve, ILL, and faculty charges were also counted) showed thatthe 6 most used periodicals (out of 195 listed) were:

Harvard Law Review 145 uses

University of Illinois Law Forum 135 uses

Yale Law Journal 92 uses

Illinois Bar Journal 84 uses

Northwestern University Law Review 76 uses

University of Chicago Law Review 70 uses (Source)

A survey reported in 1978 of a stratified random sample of 811 sociologists from 183 graduate departments (response rate: 526 or 64.86%) reporting which social science journals they regularly read showed thatthe top 7 journals read regularly by respondents were American Sociological Review (83.84%), American Sociologist (78.89%), American Journal of Sociology (65.01%), Social Forces (40.49%), Society/Trans-action (30.93%), Social Problems (29.46%), and Psychology Today (24.14%). (Source)

A 1978 study in the Biology Library of Temple University, involving a citation analysis of publications by full-time Temple biology faculty, doctoral dissertations of Temple biology Ph.D.’s, and preliminary doctoral qualifying briefs written by second-year graduate biology students at Temple during the 3-year period 1975-77 (153 source items with 4,155 citations), showed thatthe 5 most frequently cited journals (out of 60 listed) were:

Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) 307 (8.2%) citations

Journal of Cellular Biology 198 (5.3%) citations

Nature 185 (4.9%) citations

Science 177 (4.7%) citations

Journal of Molecular Biology 166 (4.4%) citations (Source)

School

A study reported in 1978 of 19 bibliographic tools listing materials for young adults, involving a total of 19,405 titles in conjunction with a purposeful sample of 270 papers collected from college-bound high school students (grades 10 through 12) in a large metropolitan area from a wide variety of schools, showed thatthe 3 most frequently cited journal titles in the 270 student papers were:

Newsweek 54 (8.9%) citations

Time 48 (8.0%) citations

Scientific American 29 (4.8%) citations (Source)

A study reported in 1979 of term paper bibliographies of high school students (270 students/papers from 6 high schools, involving 3,165 identifiable references) showed thatthe 6 most frequently cited journals were as follows:

Newsweek 54(8.9%) total citations

Time 48 (7.9%) total citations

Scientific American 29 (4.8%) total citations

American Heritage 23 (3.8%) total citations

New Republic 20 (3.3%) total citations

US News and World Report 19 (3.1%) total citations (Source)

A survey reported in 1980 of 1,178 high school students (representing a sample from 73 classes, 15 schools, and 5 school districts), including a study of their bibliographic citations to periodical articles, showed that, of 1,490 citations, 6 primary periodicals accounted for 30.2% of the citations. 9.1% of the citations referred to Newsweek, 7.5% to Time, 5.1% to U.S. News, 3.7% to Sports Illustrated, 2.5% to New Republic, 2.3 to Saturday Review. (Taken from a ranked list of the 20 most heavily cited periodicals.) (Source)

A 1981 study of 53 ninth-grade honors students in science in a suburban Philadelphia public high school showed that, of the 189 magazine citations in the 47 bibliographies 50% of all citations were from 8 magazines. These were Newsweek (9%), Time (8%), National Geographic (7%), U.S. News (6%), Business Week (6%), Forbes (5%), Science (5%), and Fortune (4%). (Taken from a list of 13 magazines in rank order.) (Source)

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