SCIENTIFIC CITATION: TWO PERSPECTIVES

Surnma~y.-The frequency with which Soviet authors cite Soviet, nonSoviet, and American authors in papers appearing in the leading Soviet psychological journal over a period of 10 years is compared with the frequency of such citations in two American psychological journals. Also presented is an analysis of the areas of psychology from which Soviet authors most frequently draw their American references and a frequency count of the most popular American authors, papers, and books cited by Soviet authors. a A statistical smdy was made of the relative frequency with which Soviet and American psychologists cite each other in their publications. First, an analysis was made of the works cited by Soviet psychologists in their publications over a period of 10 yr. Although there is a variety of periodicals and serial publications in Russian in which psychological works appear, there is only one general psychological periodical in the USSR which is also reasonably easily accessible and has been appearing for a number of years, the Voprosy Psikhologii (Psychological Issues). It accounts for about 30% of the literacure that appears in the annual list of Soviet psychological literature. A count of Soviet, non-Soviet, and American references was made in the issues of Voflrosy for the years 1967 through 1976. The periodical is issued bimonthly. Only 52 of the 60 issues were examined since some of them were not available. Omitted from the analysis were papers by non-Soviet authors and reviews of the literature. A toral of 661 papers were analyzed. They contained 10,380 references. The relative frequency of the three kinds of references mentioned remained qulte stable during the period examined. The mean percentage per volume of Soviet references was 75.48 (range 66.33 to 80.71), rhat of American references was 14.29 (range 11.84 to 22.59), and non-Soviet references were used 10.23% of the time (range 6.99 to 13.24). A count was also made of references in an American ~eriodical which comes closest to Voprory in terms of its coverage of psychological subjects, namely, Percepturrl and Motor Skills. As in the case of Voprosy. non-American authors and review papers and bibliographies were excluded from the count. In Volume 43 (1976) of Perceptual and Motor Skills a total of 2046 references were analyzed. Of these, 1927 or 94.18% were American works, 118 (5.77%) were by non-Americans, and one (.05%) by a Soviet psychologist. In other words, the frequency of citation of Soviet authors in this journal does not even begin to reflea the 6:l ratio in the number of psychological publications of American and Soviet psychologists (Zusne & Michels, 1964). A further comparison was made in a volume of a journal rhat by its very nature should show more Soviet references than most. In Volumes 11-12 (1976/77) of the Pavlovian Journal of Biological Science (formerly Conditioned Reflex) a total of 694 references were counted, 605 (87.8%) of them American, 53 (7.64% ) non-American and 36 (5.19% ) Soviet. Of rhe latter, a substantial portion were references to the same work, the English translation of Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes. Thus even this journal is lagging far behind as far as Soviet references are concerned. An additional aspect of the citation issue is the question of who gets cited most often and to what area do the most ofren cited works belong. In making the reference