Bibliographic impact of ICLARM

The availability of ICLARM items in several commercial databases was ascertained and manual citation counts were made from the Center"s library material and staff personal reprint collections. Over 300 citations of ICLARM items annually were found for recent years, with a total of 2,131 citations from 1979 to February 1988. The proportion that these items make in reference lists of articles in which they are cited has been increasing over time. Two-thirds of the citations were from developing country based authors. Fifty-three percent of all the Center"s technical contributions had been cited during the period covered, distributed over 52 countries. Some items had very high counts, e.g., 285 citations of a conference proceedings volume; 152 citations of a journal article. A close relationship was found between numbers of copies of ICLARM"s Conference Proceedings series distributed and citations (r=0.93), with less clear relationships for other series. It was concluded that the Center had made a substantial impact in fisheries research literature. ICLARM"s mode of publication was concluded to be successful, although improvement would be possible by publishing more results in the primary literature. (Author abstract)