CITATION ANALYSIS MAPPING OF JOURNALS IN APPLIED AND CLINICAL-PSYCHOLOGY

This paper uses a method of citation analysis to establish the importance ranking and relative location of 23 major journals in the field of applied and clinical psychology and related disciplines. The asymmetric citations are modelled as being the product of the cited journals ''importance,'' the citing journal's ''receptivity,'' and the ''similarity'' between the two journals. A maximum likelihood loglinear fit to this model is obtained. Multidimensional scaling of the derived similarities matrix provides an interpretable map of the journals' relative configuration. The changes in relative importance of the journals are reported for the years 1981 to 1988, together with maps of the journals for the periods 1981 to 1984 and 1985 to 1988. The results show a central core of general psychology journals, surrounded by three major groupings of applied psychology journals.