The Correlation of Local Citation Data with Citation Data from Journal Citation Reports

Abstract

University librarians continue to face the difficult task of determining which journals remain crucial for their collections during these times of static financial resources and escalating journal costs. One evaluative tool, Journal Citation Reports (JCR), recently has become available on CD-ROM, making it simpler for librarians to use its citation data as input for ranking journals. But many librarians remain unconvinced that the global citation data from the JCR bears enough correspondence to their local situation to be useful. In this project, 1 explore the correlation between global citation data available from JCR with local citation data generated specifically for the University of British Columbia, for 20 subject fields in the sciences and social sciences. The significant correlations obtained in this study suggest that large research-oriented university libraries could consider substituting global citation data for local citation data when evaluating their journals, with certain cautions.