A bibliometric analysis of physics publications in Korea, 1994-1998

This study examined research performance of Korean physicists, comparing Korean-authored papers versus internationally co-authored papers, indexed in SCI, 1994-1998, and using the number of citations received by internationally co-authored papers covered by the SCI CD-ROM. For the study, 4,665 papers published From the researchers affiliated with the physics departments or physics-associated laboratories at Korean universities and indexed by SCI were analyzed. Korean authored papers tended to be published in Korean, Japanese, and Ur( journals, while internationally co-authored papers were more likely to appear in German. Dutch, and Swiss journals. Among the 18 authorship countries ion the basis of first author), 93 internationally coauthored papers by U.S. researchers had the highest citation rate, an average 15.9 citations per paper. Of the eight countries that published over 5 papers, there was no correlation between the average number of citations per paper and the total number of citations. However, an ANOVA indicated a significant difference between the average number of citations per paper according to country (F = 5.84, p < 0.0005). In other words, papers by the U.S. and French researchers tended to be cited more frequently than papers by the Italian. Japanese, Korean, Russian, and German researchers.