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The usefulness of monographic proceedings
1Leon S. McGoogan Library of Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha 68105-1065.
Bulletin of the Medical Library Association
|January 1, 1988
Summary
Biomedical meeting proceedings have a significantly lower impact factor than journals. Libraries can likely skip purchasing most proceedings, opting only for those recommended by specialists.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical librarianship
- Bibliometrics
- Scholarly communication
Background:
- Librarians often question the value of biomedical meeting proceedings.
- Proceedings articles share similarities with journal articles, necessitating a comparative analysis of their utility.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the usefulness of biomedical meeting proceedings with traditional cardiovascular journals.
- To determine if factors like publication delay, meeting location, or topic influence the impact of proceedings.
Main Methods:
- A comparative bibliometric analysis was conducted on 32 monographic cardiovascular proceedings and 35 cardiovascular journals published in 1978.
- Citations were tracked for 1978-1980 to calculate impact factors for both proceedings and journals.
- Various factors including publication delay, meeting site, topic "hotness", indexing, and printing method were analyzed against impact factors.
Main Results:
- Journals exhibited a significantly higher mean impact factor (3.86) compared to proceedings (0.98).
- Publication delay, meeting location, and "hot" topics did not correlate with higher impact factors for proceedings.
- Camera-ready proceedings had a higher impact factor than typeset ones, but this difference is not a basis for selection.
Conclusions:
- Most libraries can likely avoid purchasing monographic proceedings due to their lower impact.
- If proceedings are deemed necessary, libraries should prioritize those specifically recommended by subject matter experts.