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Comparing Journal Use Between Biology Faculty and Undergraduate Students
Science Librarian
Penrose Library
University of Denver
Denver, CO
jokraus@du.edu
Abstract
From 1997 through 2002, the faculty in the Biological Sciences Department at the University of Denver wrote 90 articles that were indexed by Thomson/ISI's Science Citation Index. Using data from this database, a list of the sources cited by the faculty was prepared. There were a total of 3,942 citations, and most of those citations were to journal articles. The top cited journal list was compared to a list of journals our biology students used. Many of the journals in the top 20 were co-listed, but for less cited journals, the faculty used many other journals for their research.
Introduction
In 1998, the author became a general science librarian. Because he had a background in the physical sciences and engineering, he wished to learn more about the information seeking patterns and research needs of the life scientists on campus. While it is well known that journals are very important to biology students and faculty, several librarians at the University of Denver wanted to know what journals and resources were used locally. In 2000, the author presented a poster paper with a colleague (Kraus & Fisher) at the ALA Conference in Chicago. The poster documented how the undergraduate biology honors students were not citing very many web-based resources. It also showed the percentages of journals, books and miscellaneous items cited. A couple of years later, he published an article (Kraus 2002) that showed the average ages, types of resources and specific journal titles used by a later group of honors students in biology. All of these students had faculty advisors helping them prepare their research.Using anecdotal evidence, the author knew that faculty had an important role advising those students, but he wanted to know the extent the advising may have affected their citations. The author wished to compare a list of journals cited by the faculty with those journals cited by the students. The following questions needed to be answered: What journals do the biology faculty cite? Is there much duplication between the journals titles used by the faculty and the journals used by the students? Once this was determined, this would give the library an indication about the level of faculty involvement in the students' research. From such a list, one could also evaluate which journals could be cancelled, and which should be kept.
Background
The library literature contains quite a number of articles documenting how biology and life scientists use their literature, specifically their journals. Some of them cover the journal use of structural biologists (Lascar & Mendelsohn 2001), molecular biologists (Brown 2005; Hurd, Blecic & Vishwanatham 1999), forestry faculty (Haas & Lee 1991), researchers in systematic botany (Delendick 1990), biomedical and health science researchers (De Groote & Dorsch 2003; Hiller 2002; Hurd 2001; Morse & Clintworth 2000; Tenopir, King & Bush 2004), biology faculty (Crotteau 1997; Hughes 1995; McCain & Bobick 1981), and science faculty in general (Hill, Madarash-Hill & Hayes 1999). Other articles demonstrated how graduate students in biology used journals (McCain & Bobick 1981; Walcott 1994). Still others showed how undergraduates in the biological sciences used the library (Magrill & St. Clair 1990; St. Clair & Magrill 1992; Whitmire 2002). It should be noted that the authors of those articles collected their data in a variety of ways. Some were gathered through citation statistics, some through surveys, and some through electronic journal and database usage statistics.The study by McCain and Bobick was particularly interesting because it directly compared journal citations between the biology faculty and the graduate students. However, there was no recent research that directly compared undergraduate journal citations with faculty journal citations in the biological sciences. This article intends to fill that gap.
Methodology and Procedure
Using the Science Citation Index developed by Thomson/ISI, 90 papers were found to have been written by faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Denver from 1997 to 2002. There were a total of 3,942 citations. The source field of the citations was sorted, and the number of times each journal was cited was found.Once the faculty list was developed, this was compared to the list that was developed by Kraus in 2002.
Results
The table below shows the overlap of journal title citations. Italicized items indicate journal titles that are co-listed in the top 20, underlining indicates that it is co-listed with the other set, but is ranked 21-46. The columns on the left show the top journals cited by University of Denver faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences. The columns on the right show the top cited journals used by undergraduate students writing papers for biology honors courses.
| Faculty Citations 1997-2002, top 46 with ties | Student Citations 2000-2002, top 46 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Journal Title | Number of citations | Rank | Journal Title | Number of citations | |
| 1 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) | 149 | 1 | Journal of Cell Biology | 35 | |
| 2 | Nature | 105 | 2 | Nature | 31 | |
| 3 | General and Comparative Endocrinology | 103 | 3 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) | 30 | |
| 3 | Journal of Biological Chemistry | 103 | 4 | Journal of Biological Chemistry | 22 | |
| 5 | Journal of Comparative Neurology | 75 | 5 | General and Comparative Endocrinology | 19 | |
| 6 | Ecology | 68 | 6 | Science | 16 | |
| 7 | Journal of Cell Biology | 56 | 7 | Cell | 13 | |
| 8 | Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications | 49 | 8 | Cell Motility and the Cytoskeleton | 12 | |
| 9 | Science | 43 | 8 | Endocrinology | 12 | |
| 10 | Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics | 39 | 10 | Chromosoma | 11 | |
| 11 | Development | 37 | 11 | Journal of Neuroscience | 10 | |
| 12 | Journal of Molecular Evolution | 35 | 12 | Development | 9 | |
| 12 | Soil Science Society of America Journal | 32 | 13 | Developmental Biology | 8 | |
| 14 | Oecologia | 31 | 13 | Journal of Comparative Neurology | 8 | |
| 15 | Biochemistry-US | 30 | 13 | Nucleic Acids Research | 8 | |
| 15 | Peptides | 30 | 16 | Peptides | 7 | |
| 15 | Plant And Soil | 30 | 17 | Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology | 6 | |
| 18 | Developmental Biology | 28 | 17 | Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications | 6 | |
| 18 | Nucleic Acids Research | 28 | 17 | Neuron | 6 | |
| 20 | Canadian Journal of Forest Research | 26 | 20 | Archives of Histology and Cytology | 5 | |
| 21 | Journal of Physiology-London | 25 | 20 | Current Opinion in Cell Biology | 5 | |
| 22 | Cell | 23 | 20 | New England Journal of Medicine | 5 | |
| 22 | Journal of Neuroscience | 23 | 23 | Brain Research | 4 | |
| 24 | Journal of Chemical Ecology | 22 | 23 | Endocrine Reviews | 4 | |
| 25 | Cell and Tissue Research | 21 | 23 | Environmental Science and Technology | 4 | |
| 25 | Neuron | 21 | 23 | Experimental Neurology | 4 | |
| 25 | Pharmacogenetics | 21 | 23 | FEBS Letters | 4 | |
| 28 | FEBS Letters | 20 | 23 | Journal of Cell Science | 4 | |
| 29 | Biotropica | 19 | 23 | Journal of Molecular Biology | 4 | |
| 29 | Chemical Senses | 19 | 23 | Molecular Endocrinology | 4 | |
| 29 | Journal of the American Chemical Society | 19 | 23 | Molecular and Cellular Biology | 4 | |
| 29 | Journal of Experimental Zoology | 19 | 23 | Molecular Biology of the Cell | 4 | |
| 29 | Journal of Molecular Biology | 19 | 23 | Neuroendocrinology | 4 | |
| 29 | Molecular Biology and Evolution | 19 | 23 | Physiological Reviews | 4 | |
| 35 | Auk | 18 | 23 | Trends in Cell Biology | 4 | |
| 35 | Insect Biochemistry And Molecular Biology | 18 | 36 | Biochimica et Biophysica Acta | 3 | |
| 35 | Journal of Ecology | 18 | 36 | Bioscience | 3 | |
| 38 | Soil Biology And Biochemistry | 17 | 36 | Cancer Research | 3 | |
| 38 | Tree Physiology | 17 | 36 | Diabetes | 3 | |
| 38 | Vegetatio | 17 | 36 | EMBO Journal | 3 | |
| 41 | Arctic and Alpine Research | 16 | 36 | Federation Proceedings (FASEB) | 3 | |
| 41 | Evolution | 16 | 36 | Genes and Development | 3 | |
| 41 | Molecular Pharmacology | 16 | 36 | Journal of Experimental Zoology | 3 | |
| 44 | Journal of Tropical Ecology | 15 | 36 | Journal of Molecular Evolution | 3 | |
| 44 | Pesticide Biochemistry and Physiology | 15 | 36 | Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological sciences | 3 | |
| 46 | Annual Review of Biochemistry | 14 | 36 | Radiocarbon | 3 | |
| 46 | Biotechniques | 14 | ||||
| 46 | DNA and cell biology | 14 | ||||
| 46 | Forest Ecology and Management | 14 | ||||
| 46 | Journal of Wildlife Management | 14 |
Conclusions
Even though 12 of the top 20 journals were co-listed, there was not as much overlap as expected. Some of the reasons could be:- Students performed their own database and web searches, and did not just use sources given to them from their faculty advisors. This could be how students found articles from Cell Motility and the Cytoskeleton, Endocrinology and Chromosoma.
- Students may have used different citation chains from article references.
Since about half of the biology faculty advise honors students, the faculty who work in the areas of ecology, forestry and soil science may not advise as many students. This would account for the greater number of faculty citations to journals such as the Soil Science Society of America Journal, Ecology, and the Canadian Journal of Forest Research.
For cancellation decisions, this data should be used with great care. For example, the average age of 19 journal articles cited by the faculty to the Journal of Experimental Zoology was over 43 years old. The faculty may find older articles from the Journal of Experimental Zoology useful, but current articles may not be as important. Even though this is a relatively high use journal, the library could consider it for cancellation. Also, evaluation of the 14 faculty citations to the journal Biotechniques, 11 of the 14 citations are to the same article (Volume 7, page 514). This showed how important that specific article was, but a current subscription to the journal may not be as important.
Faculty and student citations do not provide the whole picture on journal use. For every faculty citation, there could be 10 or 20 uses or downloads on campus. Many life science journals could be used heavily, but it may not be cited that often by the faculty. But, if the faculty do not cite a journal very often, this may provide an indication of low use. William Loughner (1996) covers these and other limitations concerning the use of citation data for collection development decisions.Overall, the data showed that the biology faculty are using a wide variety of high quality scientific journals in various subject areas. It also indicated that faculty stressed the same type of high quality journals for their students.
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