The international visibility and citation impact of Scandinavian research articles in selected Social Science fields: The decay of a myth

The article covers the period 1989-1998. It investigates the results and meaningfulness of applying the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI, ISI, USA) to publication and citation studies of nine selected Social Science research areas in Scandinavia by analysing the international visibility, the research profiles, and relative citation impact. The study demonstrates that the areas Economics, Political Science, Sociology & Anthropology, Social Policy, Language & Linguistics, and, for Denmark and Finland, Information & Library Science as well as, for Sweden, Management studies, are well anchored internationally with a visibility in line with common S&T domains. The journal article world share of the region is increasing rapidly. Other small European countries, like the Netherlands, are even more substantially represented as regards citation analyses. The conclusion is that SSCI, although biased towards Angle-American publications, actually makes room for valid bibliometric and scientometric analyses of research published by Scandinavian and other smaller countries with English as the second language in journals regarded international by ISI.