kelsey.p65 Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 357 357 Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry: A Citation Analysis from Faculty at Southern Universities Paul Kelsey and Tom Diamond Paul Kelsey is an Agriculture Librarian in the LSU Libraries at Louisiana State University; e-mail: pkelsey@lsu.edu. Tom Diamond is Head of Reference Services in the LSU Libraries at Louisiana State University; e-mail: notted@lsu.edu. The authors wish to thank Steve Bensman, Sigrid Kelsey, Lois Kuyper- Rushing, and Elaine Smyth for reading the article and offering helpful suggestions for improvement. The authors also wish to thank Heather Credeur for verifying AGRICOLA Subject Category Codes. Citations of articles published from 1990 to 2002 of faculty teaching at selected southern universities are counted and analyzed to form a core list of the most highly cited journals for the field of forestry. Core lists are developed for assistant, associate, and full professors; and citation dif- ferences among the three groups are analyzed. The core list of journals is compared with the list of primary forestry serials compiled by the Cornell Core Agricultural Literature Project. The analysis focuses on the simi- larities and differences of both studies, and discusses the importance of ecological and interdisciplinary journals to forestry research. orest science has become in- creasingly broad over the years and now covers a vast array of subject specializations.1 The Society of American Foresters recently defined the word forest as “an ecosystem characterized by … tree cover” reflecting a “modern ‘ecosystem’ approach” to for- est science that is more inclusive in nature than past definitions.2 Scientists conduct research in forest ecology and soils, forest entomology, forest genetics, biometrics, urban forestry, and medicinal plant physi- ology, to list only a few of the diverse sub- ject areas in the field. Thomas W. Steele and Jeffrey C. Stier analyzed citations ap- pearing in the journal Forest Science and concluded that interdisciplinary research contributed a “measurable and positive impact” on forestry literature.3 Forestry schools are adapting to meet the changing expectations of forestry employers seek- ing a “broader and more integrative” prac- tice of forestry.4 For example, in 2002, the School of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries at Louisiana State University (LSU) changed its name to the School of Renew- able Natural Resources to reflect a “more holistic” mission dedicated to interdisci- plinary and ecological research.5 The forestry literature reflects these changing trends. Although forest scien- tists still use journals specific to forestry, such as Forest Science and Forest Products Journal, researchers frequently cite jour- nals from a variety disciplines outside the field. Forest scientists often cite journals from fields such as botany, plant science, ecology, environmental science, chemis- try, agronomy, horticulture, and genetics. What constitutes a core list of journals in a field as interdisciplinary as forestry? Do 358 College & Research Libraries September 2003 significant differences in citation patterns exist among assistant professors, new to the field, and associate and full profes- sors? The present study addresses these questions. Academic libraries continue to face a serials crisis as rising costs for journals consume ever larger amounts of collection development budgets. The Association of Research Libraries reported significant cost increases (8.8% per serial unit) for jour- nal titles from 1986 to 2001, forcing many libraries to reduce serials and shift bud- gets to cover serials subscriptions.6 Librar- ies at liberal arts colleges have felt the im- pact of escalating costs for science journals, and many college libraries report title can- cellations.7 Price increases remain particu- larly high for science, medical, and tech- nical journals. Journals in the field of agri- culture posted a 19.77 percent increase in average title cost from 1997 to 2001.8 Two important forestry journals, Forest Ecology and Management and Tree Physiology, posted 26.8 percent and 48.9 percent respective increases during the same time period.9 Libraries may only be able to afford ten to fifteen (or perhaps fewer, depending on budget and size of the library) of the top core journals for an academic discipline. How do librarians, who may not be sub- ject specialists, effectively evaluate serial holdings for the sciences in today’s envi- ronment of escalating journal costs? Citation studies using bibliometrics serve as a well-established means of pro- ducing core lists of journals for academic disciplines. Bradford’s Law of Scattering states that a small “nucleus of periodicals” (the core) devoted to any scientific disci- pline will contain a majority of articles, with the rest appearing in journals scat- tered in successive “zones containing the same number of articles as the nucleus.”10 Citation studies typically establish a core list (or lists) by ranking journals with the highest citation counts for an academic discipline. Librarians use core lists for purchasing and cancellation decisions and to evaluate existing collections. A core list, although an important tool, should not serve as the only determining factor for evaluating serials. Indeed, the “ulti- mate core list” may not exist for a par- ticular library, and journal use may vary from one group of library constituents to another.11 Core lists are most effective when used in conjunction with user sur- veys and other traditional tools for mak- ing serials decisions.12 Circulation data, collection development philosophies, budget considerations, the strength of a particular program at a college or univer- sity, groups of diverse users, and faculty research interests all play a significant role in serials management decisions. How- ever, researchers continue to conduct ci- tation studies identifying core titles to help with serials management decisions. ISI’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR) provides lists of journals for a number of academic disciplines. The database allows the user to rank titles by impact factor, total citations, and other criteria. Every journal appearing in the JCR database “is assigned to at least one subject category (or discipline) indicating a general area of science or the social sciences.”13 How- ever, JCR category lists contain inherent limitations. First, the JCR “data do not necessarily reflect a journal’s importance to its own discipline because it includes citations from journals in other disci- plines.”14 Second, the database does not include all refereed journals important to a discipline and does not count citations from journals not indexed in the ISI data- base. Third, interdisciplinary journals important to a particular discipline may not be assigned to the discipline’s subject category. Hence, JCR citation data are “in- tended to complement, not replace, tra- ditional qualitative and subjective inputs, such as peer surveys and specialist opin- ions.”15 Notwithstanding JCR limitations, “impact factor is the most frequently used citation measure for journal collection management” and is included on the core lists appearing in this study along with the JCR list of forestry journals.16 Literature Review Several citation analyses in the sciences appear in the recent library literature. Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 359 Claudia Lascar and Loren D. Mendelsohn conducted a bibliometric analysis of pub- lications emanating from a small number of structural biologists sampled from sev- eral institutions. Citation patterns re- vealed the importance of interdisciplinary journals to the field.17 Angela M. Gooden analyzed the citations from thirty chem- istry dissertations from the Ohio State University Department of Chemistry from 1996 to 2000. Her study, which iden- tified a core list of chemistry journals for collection development, examined the use of materials, dissertation subjects, types of publications cited, and the currency of materials.18 Louise S. Zipp conducted a study to provide a core list of journals for environmental geology and examined interdisciplinarity within the context of collection development.19 Zipp used intercitation analysis to create a journal network by measuring “journal-to-jour- nal citations and thus the extent to which one title connects with the work pub- lished in another journal.”20 Researchers have conducted several citation studies specific to the agricultural sciences. Luti Salisbury recently analyzed citations of publications from the ento- mology faculty teaching at the University of Arkansas by conducting literature searches in AGRICOLA, Cab Abstracts, and Biological Abstracts. The analysis identified the most highly cited journals, journals in which the faculty publish most frequently, and the age and type of cited publications.21 Y. M. Patil analyzed cita- tions from articles appearing in Agropedology, a soil science journal impor- tant for Indian agricultural researchers, to establish a core list containing forty- two journals.22 Segun Adewole analyzed citations from the subscription list of jour- nals held in the National Animal Produc- tion Research Institute library. The study established a core list of livestock jour- nals.23 A search of the literature uncovered a small number of cogent forestry citation studies. Steele and Stier probed the inter- disciplinary relationship between the fre- quency a forestry article is cited and the role played by the articles cited in the author’s bibliography. The authors con- cluded that forestry articles are cited more frequently if the works cited draw from a wider universe of interdisciplinary mate- rials.24 Stephanie C. Haas and Kate Lee analyzed citations of faculty publications from the University of Florida’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation. They applied their analysis to examining their library’s forestry journal holdings and for other collection development purposes.25 Pamela J. Jakes and Andra Slimak VanDyne examined citations from the re- search articles of USDA Forest Service employees from one experiment station. The study identified the journals most fre- quently used to publish forestry research.26 The Cornell Agricultural Literature Project (CALP), conducted by research- ers at Cornell University’s Mann Library, established core lists of literature for sev- eral agricultural disciplines, including forestry. Steering committee experts from each discipline recommended the mono- graphs subjected to citation analyses to create the core lists.27 The Literature of For- estry and Agroforestry, the last of the CALP series, identified core lists of the primary forestry serials. The researchers analyzed 12,500 citations, which yielded a total of 648 serial titles. The analysis resulted in a nonranked core list of sixty journals and a ranked core list, based on citation counts, containing fifty-six titles. The ranked core list shared many of the titles that appeared on the nonranked core list. The researchers counted citations from tropical and temperate forestry docu- ments separately in order to identify jour- nals on the lists pertinent to Third World and developed countries (with some titles listed in both categories), respectively. The researchers identified a total of forty-three journals for developed countries on the ranked core. The Cornell series is a land- mark work in the agricultural sciences. Purpose of the Study The primary purpose of this study is to establish a current core list of the most highly cited forestry journals for use as a 360 College & Research Libraries September 2003 collection development tool. Goals for the study included offering a source of data to compare with the core list of primary forestry serials provided in CALP’s Lit- erature of Forestry and Agroforestry; analyz- ing citation differences between the three ranks of forestry faculty by providing separate core lists for assistant, associate, and full professors; compiling compara- tive lists of the citing journals with the most frequent publications for each fac- ulty rank; and researching the impact of interdisciplinary journals on the resources selected by the forestry faculty. To con- duct this analysis, categorical data are constructed by using the citation data and AGRICOLA Subject Category Codes (SCC). Finally, the investigators hope to provide a useful methodology for other researchers to establish similar core lists in other agricultural disciplines. Procedure The investigators analyzed citations from forestry faculty members teaching at se- lected universities in the southern United States. To be selected, a university had to offer a doctoral program in forestry as listed in Peterson’s Graduate Programs in the Physical Sciences, Mathematics, Agricultural Sciences, the Environment & Natural Sci- ences.28 The following seven schools were selected: Auburn University, Louisiana State University, Mississippi State Univer- sity, Stephen F. Austin State University, Texas A&M, University of Florida, and the University of Georgia. Although many of the faculty selected for the study conduct research focusing on the south- ern region of the United States, their re- search is germane to a national universe of forest scientists. Southern researchers publish in and cite a core of nationally peer-reviewed journals, and their topics (genomics, forest biometrics, silviculture, wood science, ecophysiology, etc.) span the entire spectrum of the field of forestry. For each university, the investigators selected a representative sample compris- ing 50 percent of the faculty members from each rank: professor, associate pro- fessor, and assistant professor. During the summer of 2002, the investigators con- sulted each faculty department Web page to determine faculty status and selected every other member from each rank from the alphabetical list of faculty. In general, the sample revealed that assistant profes- sors were in the early part of their pub- lishing career, associate professors had been publishing in the field long enough to earn tenure and promotion, and full professors had been publishing for the longest period of time. However, it is pos- sible that some associate professors have remained at their current status for a num- ber of years without promotion or that an assistant professor may have publications spanning a number of years and been promoted to associate or full professor in a previous position. Nonetheless, the sample provides a representation reveal- ing the differences in citation patterns for each faculty rank. The study included extension and ex- periment station faculty but excluded emeritus professors, affiliate and adjunct faculty, faculty with joint appointments, nonfaculty extension and experiment sta- tion personnel, instructors, and visiting professors. At schools combining forestry, wildlife, and fisheries faculty (as in the case of the LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources), the authors selected only faculty clearly specializing in for- estry. The selection of faculty members occurred without regard to their area of specialization within the field of forestry. The authors selected seventy-four for- estry faculty members. For each faculty member, the authors conducted literature searches in Web of Science, CABDirect, and AGRICOLA for the years 1990–2002. In most cases, Web of Science provided access to all the cited ref- erences. For journal articles indexed in CABDirect or AGRICOLA, but not in Web of Science, the authors obtained the articles from the LSU Libraries or through interli- brary borrowing. The researchers analyzed citations from academic journals published at least biannually. The study excluded annual proceedings, transactions, annals, monographs, irregular publications, trade Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 361 TABLE 1 Core List of Forestry Journals Ranked by Citation Counts (1990�2002) % of Cumulative 2001 JCR No. of Total % of Impact No. Citations Citations Citations Factor 1 Canadian Journal of Forest Research 772 4.86 4.86 1.108 2 Forest Science 707 4.45 9.31 1.089 3 Forest Products Journal 615 3.87 13.18 0.331 4 Forest Ecology and Management 431 2.71 15.89 0.906 5 Ecology 346 2.18 18.07 3.704 6 Tree Physiology 344 2.17 20.24 2.309 7 Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 318 2 22.24 N/A 8 Soil Science Society of America Journal 265 1.67 23.91 1.312 9 Journal of Forestry 264 1.66 25.57 0.429 10�11 Oecologia 245 1.54 27.11 2.474 10�11 New Phytologist 245 1.54 28.65 2.53 12 Plant Physiology 240 1.51 30.16 5.105 13 Science 222 1.4 31.56 23.329 14 Journal of Environmental Quality 210 1.32 32.88 1.155 15 Silvae Genetica 202 1.27 34.15 0.354 16 Plant Cell and Environment 198 1.25 35.4 3.296 17 Physiologia Plantarum 191 1.2 36.6 1.76 18 Holzforschung 180 1.13 37.73 0.939 19 Plant and Soil 157 0.99 38.72 1.229 20 Environmental Pollution 152 0.96 39.68 1.56 21 Canadian Journal of Botany 140 0.88 40.56 0.949 22 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 135 0.85 41.41 10.896 23 Theoretical and Applied Genetics 131 0.82 42.23 2.438 24�25 Wood and Fiber Science 129 0.81 43.04 0.453 24�25 Nature 129 0.81 43.85 27.955 26 Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences 126 0.79 44.64 3.009 27 Phytopathology 123 0.77 45.41 2.126 28 Genetics 121 0.76 46.17 4.803 29 Water Resources Research 114 0.72 46.89 1.757 30 Phytochemistry 101 0.64 47.53 1.296 31 American Journal of Botany 93 0.59 48.12 2.463 32 Soil Biology and Biochemistry 88 0.55 48.67 1.755 33 Wetlands 86 0.54 49.21 1.137 34 Ecological Applications 84 0.53 49.74 3.335 35 Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 82 0.52 50.26 0.922 Total Citations 7,986 Total Citations for All Journals Cited 15,880 Total Number of Journals Cited 1,269 362 College & Research Libraries September 2003 TABLE 2 Professor Core List of Forestry Journals Ranked by Citation Counts (1990�2002) % of Cumulative 2001 JCR No. of Total % of Impact No. Citations Citations Citations Factor 1 Forest Products Journal 354 5.15 5.15 0.331 2 Canadian Journal of Forest Research 338 4.92 10.07 1.108 3 Forest Science 332 4.83 14.9 1.089 4 Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 196 2.85 17.75 N/A 5 Forest Ecology and Management 194 2.82 20.57 0.906 6 Ecology 182 2.65 23.22 3.704 7 Soil Science Society of America Journal 168 2.45 25.67 1.312 8 Holzforschung 141 2.05 27.72 0.939 9 Theoretical and Applied Genetics 121 1.76 29.48 2.438 10 Silvae Genetica 105 1.53 31.01 0.354 11 Journal of Forestry 98 1.43 32.44 0.429 12 Tree Physiology 94 1.37 33.81 2.309 13 Wood and Fiber Science 91 1.32 35.13 0.453 14 Genetics 90 1.31 36.44 4.803 15 Phytochemistry 89 1.3 37.74 1.296 16 Plant Physiology 86 1.25 38.99 5.105 17 Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences 78 1.14 40.13 3.009 18 Wetlands 78 1.14 41.27 1.137 19 Science 77 1.12 42.39 23.329 20 Journal of Environmental Quality 75 1.09 43.48 1.155 21 American Journal of Botany 69 1 44.48 2.463 22 Physiologia Plantarum 67 0.98 45.46 1.76 23 South African Forestry Journal 63 0.92 46.38 N/A 24 Oecologia 59 0.86 47.24 2.474 25 Plant Cell and Environment 58 0.84 48.08 3.296 26 Plant Cell Reports 56 0.82 48.9 1.375 27 Soil Biology and Biochemistry 56 0.82 49.72 1.755 28 American Midland Naturalist 55 0.8 50.52 0.494 Total Citations 3,470 Total Citations for Professors 6,870 Total Number of Journals Cited 696 magazines, newsletters, U.S. Department of Agriculture publications, and publica- tions emanating from state extension and experiment stations. The authors included academic journals bearing the words an- nals, monographs, or transactions in their titles, such as Ecological Monographs and Annals of Botany. The authors consulted Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory, WorldCat, and AGRICOLA for biblio- graphic verification and to determine the subject content of journals. The authors created separate Excel worksheets for each faculty rank and tabu- lated the cited references from each faculty publication. Each worksheet listed the journals cited, citing journals and the num- ber of citations for each journal title. The authors combined the total citation counts of all three faculty ranks to establish a core Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 363 TABLE 3 Associate Professor Core List of Forestry Journals Ranked by Citation Counts (1990�2002) % of Cumulative 2001 JCR No. of Total % of Impact No. Citations Citations Citations Factor 1 Canadian Journal of Forest Research 266 4.8 4.8 1.108 2 Forest Science 256 4.62 9.42 1.089 3 Forest Products Journal 225 4.06 13.48 0.331 4 Tree Physiology 162 2.92 16.4 2.309 5 New Phytologist 143 2.58 18.98 2.53 6 Journal of Forestry 124 2.24 21.22 0.429 7 Environmental Pollution 111 2 23.22 1.56 8 Forest Ecology and Management 108 1.95 25.17 0.906 9 Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 105 1.89 27.06 N/A 10 Journal of Environmental Quality 103 1.86 28.92 1.155 11 Plant Physiology 92 1.66 30.58 5.105 12 Water Resources Research 90 1.62 32.2 1.757 13 Science 87 1.57 33.77 23.329 14 Phytopathology 84 1.51 35.28 2.126 15 Canadian Journal of Botany 65 1.17 36.45 0.949 16 Soil Science Society of America Journal 63 1.14 37.59 1.312 17 Plant Cell and Environment 60 1.08 38.67 3.296 18 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 60 1.08 39.75 10.896 19 Ecology 58 1.05 40.8 3.704 20 Gene 52 0.94 41.74 3.041 21 Physiologia Plantarum 52 0.94 42.68 1.76 22 Oecologia 50 0.9 43.58 2.474 23 Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences 48 0.87 44.45 3.009 24 Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 45 0.81 45.26 0.772 25 Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions 43 0.78 46.04 3.855 26 Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 41 0.74 46.78 0.922 27 Silvae Genetica 40 0.72 47.5 0.354 28 Holzforschung 39 0.7 48.2 0.939 29 Plant and Soil 39 0.7 48.9 1.229 30 Molecular & General Genetics 38 0.69 49.59 2.472 31 Applied and Environmental Microbiology 36 0.65 50.24 3.688 32 Journal. American Chemical Society 36 0.65 50.89 6.079 Total Citations 2,821 Total Citations for Associate Professors 5,547 Total Number of Journals Cited 709 364 College & Research Libraries September 2003 list of the most frequently cited journals for the field of forestry. The researchers established a core list for each faculty des- ignation by ranking the journals with the highest citation counts for each faculty group. The authors counted a total of 15,880 citations from a universe of 1,269 journal titles to arrive at the core list of for- estry journals. The forestry faculty selected for the study published a total of 969 ar- ticles in 194 journals. Journals with cita- tions comprising the cumulative top 50 percent appear on the core list. The National Agriculture Library (NAL) assigns AGRICOLA SCC to journals and articles indexed in NAL. The subject codes are specific to agriculture and provide a simi- lar function to the Library of Congress Sub- ject Headings. Interdisciplinary journals are assigned a primary subject code and addi- tional secondary code(s). The subject codes serve to identify the primary topic of a jour- nal or a journal that is interdisciplinary in nature. The authors identified subject codes for the universe of journals in the study by consulting AGRICOLA. (See table 10.) TABLE 4 Assistant Professor Core List of Forestry Journals Ranked by Citation Counts (1990�2002) % of Cumulative 2001 JCR No. of Total % of Impact No. Citations Citations Citations Factor 1 Canadian Journal of Forest Research 168 4.85 4.85 1.108 2 Oecologia 136 3.93 8.78 2.474 3 Forest Ecology and Management 129 3.73 12.51 0.906 4 Forest Science 119 3.44 15.95 1.089 5 Ecology 106 3.06 19.01 3.704 6 Tree Physiology 88 2.54 21.55 2.309 7 Plant Cell and Environment 80 2.31 23.86 3.296 8 Plant and Soil 75 2.17 26.03 1.229 9 New Phytologist 73 2.11 28.14 2.53 10 Physiologia Plantarum 72 2.08 30.22 1.76 11 Plant Physiology 62 1.79 32.01 5.105 12 Science 58 1.67 33.68 23.329 13 Silvae Genetica 57 1.65 35.33 0.772 14 Water Air and Soil Pollution 57 1.65 36.98 0.354 15 Ecological Applications 51 1.47 38.45 3.335 16 Nature 50 1.44 39.89 27.955 17 Functional Ecology 49 1.41 41.3 2.144 18 Global Change Biology 43 1.24 42.54 3.537 19 Journal of Forestry 42 1.21 43.75 0.429 20 Forest Products Journal 36 1.04 44.79 1.42 21 Trees�Structure and Function 36 1.04 45.83 0.331 22 Ecological Monographs 34 0.98 46.81 1.312 23 Soil Science Society of America Journal 34 0.98 47.79 5.551 24 Agroforestry Systems 33 0.95 48.74 1.153 25 Journal of Environmental Quality 32 0.92 49.66 1.155 26 Forstarchiv 30 0.87 50.53 N/A Total Citations 1,750 Total Citations for Assistant Professors 3,463 Total Number of Journals Cited 475 Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 365 TABLE 5 Combined List of Core Forestry Journals Cited for Each Faculty Rank (1990�2002) Composite Professors Associates Assistants No. Rank Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Canadian Journal of Forest Research 1 2 1 1 Forest Science 2 3 2 4 Forest Products Journal 3 1 3 20 Forest Ecology and Management 4 5 8 3 Ecology 5 6 19 5 Tree Physiology 6 12 4 6 Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 7 4 9 N/A Soil Science Society of America Journal 8 7 16 23 Journal of Forestry 9 11 6 19 Oecologia 10 24 22 2 New Phytologist 11 N/A 5 9 Plant Physiology 12 16 11 11 Science 13 19 13 12 Journal of Environmental Quality 14 20 10 25 Silvae Genetica 15 10 27 13 Plant Cell and Environment 16 25 17 7 Physiologia Plantarum 17 22 21 10 Holzforschung 18 8 28 N/A Plant and Soil 19 N/A 29 8 Environmental Pollution 20 N/A 7 N/A Canadian Journal of Botany 21 N/A 15 N/A Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 22 N/A 18 N/A Theoretical and Applied Genetics 23 9 N/A N/A Wood and Fiber Science 24 13 N/A N/A Nature 25 N/A N/A 16 Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences 26 17 23 N/A Phytopathology 27 N/A 14 N/A Genetics 28 14 N/A N/A Water Resources Research 29 N/A 12 N/A Phytochemistry 30 15 N/A N/A American Journal of Botany 31 21 N/A N/A Soil Biology and Biochemistry 32 27 N/A N/A Wetlands 33 18 N/A N/A Ecological Applications 34 N/A N/A 15 Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 35 N/A 26 N/A Ecological Monographs 36 N/A N/A 22 Journal of the American Chemical Society and Computer Sciences 38(T) N/A 32 N/A South African Forestry Journal 38(T) 23 N/A N/A Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 42 N/A 24 14 Trees�Structure and Function 44(T) N/A N/A 21 Agroforestry Systems 45 N/A N/A 24 Functional Ecology 46 N/A N/A 17 American Midland Naturalist 48 28 N/A N/A 366 College & Research Libraries September 2003 Results Ten tables display the results of the cita- tion analysis. Table 1 includes the core list of forestry journals for all faculty mem- bers selected for the study ranked by ci- tation counts. Thirty-five journals com- prise the top 50 percent of the total cumulative citations. The top nine jour- nals account for over 25 percent of the core journal titles and produce over 25 percent of the total citations. The core list journal titles account for 7,986 citations (50.26%) of the total of 15,880 citations. The results conform to Bradford’s law of scattering. Tables 2 through 4 display the core lists of journals cited by each faculty rank. Table 2 reveals that the professors gener- ated a total of 3,470 citations from a core list of twenty-eight journals. These jour- nals account for over 50 percent of the cumulative citations and represent four percent of all journals cited by the pro- fessors. The top seven journals account for over 25 percent of the total citations. In table 3, thirty-two titles represent the core list of journals cited by the associate professors. These thirty-two titles account for 50 percent of the cumulative citations and represent 4.5 percent of all journals cited by the associate professors. The top eight journals account for over 25 percent of the total citations. In table 4, twenty- six titles constitute the core list of jour- nals cited by the assistant professors. These twenty-six titles account for over 50 percent of the total citations and rep- resent 5.5 percent of all journals cited by the assistant professors. The top eight journals represent over 25 percent of the total citations. Table 5 combines the results from the core lists for each faculty designation (tables 2, 3, and 4) and includes the com- posite ranking from the universe of 1,269 journals. Table 5 includes fifteen journals, such as Trees—Structure and Function and Agroforestry Systems, that appear on the separate core lists for the three faculty designations, but not on the combined core list (table 1). Fifteen journals, includ- ing Forest Products Journal and Silvae Genetica, appear on all three faculty core lists. Six journals, including New Phytologist and Plant and Soil, appear vari- ously on two of the three core lists. Twenty-nine journals appear on only one of the three core lists for each faculty des- ignation. Tables 6 and 7 present tabulated data for the citing journals or the journals in which the faculty published their articles. Table 6 shows the list of citing journals containing the top 50 percent cumulative publications, ranked by number of pub- lications, for each faculty designation. The table contains eight journals listed for both the professors and assistant profes- sors; twelve journals are listed for the as- sociate professors. The top two journals listed for profes- sors account for 25.64 percent of the total number of published articles; the three TABLE 5 (CONTINUED) Combined List of Core Forestry Journals Cited for Each Faculty Rank (1990�2002) Composite Professors Associates Assistants No. Rank Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Plant Cell Reports 49 26 N/A N/A Gene 52(T) N/A 20 N/A Molecular & General Genetics 55(T) N/A 30 N/A Global Change Biology 61(T) N/A N/A 18 Applied and Environmental Microbiology 67 N/A 31 N/A Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions 72(T) N/A 25 N/A Forstarchiv 92(T) N/A N/A 26 T = Tie Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 367 TABLE 6 Citing Journals Ranked by Number of Publications (1990�2002) % of Cumulative 2001 JCR No. of Total % of Impact No. Citations Citations Citations Factor Professors 1 Forest Products Journal 80 16.95 16.95 0.331 2 Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 41 8.69 25.64 N/A 3 Forest Ecology and Management 26 5.51 31.15 0.906 4 Holzforschung 24 5.08 36.23 0.939 5 Tree Physiology 23 4.87 41.1 2.309 6 Soil Science Society of America Journal 17 3.6 44.7 1.312 7 Canadian Journal of Forest Research 16 3.39 48.09 1.108 8 Forest Science 14 2.97 51.06 1.089 Total 241 Total Number of Publications 472 Total Number of Citing Journals 109 Associate Professors 1 Forest Products Journal 58 17.11 17.11 0.331 2 Canadian Journal of Forest Research 20 5.9 23.01 1.108 3 Forest Ecology and Management 17 5.01 28.02 0.906 4 Forest Science 17 5.01 33.03 1.089 5 Wood and Fiber Science 13 3.83 36.86 0.453 6 New Phytologist 12 3.54 40.4 2.53 7 Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 11 3.24 43.64 N/A 8 Holzforschung 10 2.95 46.59 0.939 9 New Forests 10 2.95 49.54 0.519 10 Environmental Pollution 7 2.06 51.6 1.56 11 Journal of Forestry 7 2.06 53.66 0.429 12 Tree Physiology 7 2.06 55.72 2.309 Total 189 Total Number of Publications 339 Total Number of Citing Journals 89 Assistant Professors 1 Forest Ecology and Management 17 10.76 10.76 0.906 2 Forest Products Journal 16 10.13 20.89 0.331 3 Canadian Journal of Forest Research 13 8.23 29.12 1.108 4 New Phytologist 10 6.33 35.45 2.53 5 Forest Science 9 5.7 41.15 1.089 6 Agroforestry Systems 5 3.16 44.31 1.153 7 Functional Ecology 5 3.16 47.47 2.144 8 Trees�Structure and Function 5 3.16 50.63 1.42 Total 80 Total Number of Publications 158 Total Number of Citing Journals 62 Total Number of Publications 969 Total Number of Cited Journals 194 368 College & Research Libraries September 2003 top journals for associate and assistant professors account for 28.02 percent and 29.12 percent of the number of published articles for these respective groups. The faculty published 969 articles in 194 jour- nals. Table 7 combines all the citing jour- nals listed for each rank in table 6. Eight journal titles appear on only one of the three faculty core lists. Four journals ap- pear variously for two of the faculty des- ignations, and faculty in all ranks pub- lished articles in four journals. Table 8 summarizes the data for the journals cited and the citing journals ac- cording to faculty rank. A total of seventy- four faculty members cited 15,880 articles published in 1,269 journals. The faculty published 969 articles in 194 journals. Faculty members published an average number of 13.09 articles. Professors pub- lished 14.75 articles per faculty member, the highest of the three groups, whereas the associate professors published 14.13 articles per faculty member and the as- sistant professors 8.78 articles per faculty member. Table 9 compares LSU’s study with the CALP core list of forestry journals for developed countries and includes the JCR list of forestry journals. The current study identified a ranked list of thirty-five core journals compared to the CALP list of forty-three ranked journals for developed countries receiving the highest number of citations. For comparative purposes, CALP’s core list is used for developed countries because the core titles produced in the present analysis do not appear on CALP’s Third World core list. Four addi- tional titles for developed countries ap- peared on the nonranked CALP core list of sixty titles for developed and Third World countries. The table shows that twenty-one CALP titles (48.84% of the CALP core) appear on the core list of titles in the present study. The current study identified twelve titles (34.29% of the LSU core), including Tree Physiology and Jour- nal of Environmental Quality, that did not appear on the CALP core lists. Table 9 lists the top thirty-five journals from the present study first, followed by the ranked CALP titles not appearing on the LSU core and the two remaining noncore forestry titles from CALP. For compara- tive purposes, the table lists the LSU, CALP, and JCR numerical rankings. Twenty-six journals from the LSU core list TABLE 7 Combined List of Citing Journals for Each Faculty Rank (1990�2002) Professors Associates Assistants Table 6 Table 6 Table 6 Forest Products Journal 1 1 2 Forest Ecology and Management 3 3 1 Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 2 7 N/A Canadian Journal of Forest Research 7 2 3 Forest Science 8 4 5 Holzforschung 4 8 N/A Tree Physiology 5 12 N/A Wood and Fiber Science N/A 5 N/A New Phytologist N/A 6 4 Soil Science Society of America Journal 6 N/A N/A Journal of Forestry N/A 11 N/A New Forests N/A 9 N/A Environmental Pollution N/A 10 N/A Trees�Structure and Function N/A N/A 8 Agroforestry Systems N/A N/A 6 Functional Ecology N/A N/A 7 Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 369 appear in the JCR database, but not in the subject category list for forestry. One jour- nal, Southern Journal of Applied Forestry, does not appear at all in the JCR database. Table 10 categorizes the universe of jour- nals according to AGRICOLA SCC assign- ment. The investigators used WilsonWeb’s AGRICOLA database to extract the jour- nal codes. A total of 576 journals received code numbers out of a universe of 1,269 journals. The 693 journals not assigned code numbers only represent 16.44 percent of total citations. The table categories in- clude forestry code-only assignments, for- estry and secondary codes, and journals only assigned nonforestry codes. The table notes only the primary subject code as- signed to each journal, although multiple codes may have been assigned. Fifty-two journals, representing 22.36 percent of the total citations, received a single forestry code. Fourteen journals, representing 7.35 percent of the total citations, received a combination of forestry and nonforestry codes. A total of 510 nonforestry coded journals accounted for 53.85 percent of the total citations. Within the nonforestry code(s), the Auxiliary Disciplines SCC, which includes the Life Sciences SCC, ac- counted for the largest number of journals (245) and citations (3,933). The information in table 10 is useful for illustrating the broad spectrum of subjects covered by these journals and shows the percentage of citations for particular subjects within the codes. Analysis The study produced a core list of journals with significant differences from the CALP study. Twelve titles appear only on the LSU core list, including Journal of En- vironmental Quality, Proceedings of the Na- tional Academy of Sciences of the USA, Theo- retical and Applied Genetics, Phytopathology, and Genetics. All of these titles are inter- disciplinary in nature. The presence of Theoretical and Applied Genetics and Genet- ics on the core list points to the recent ten- dency in the sciences to conduct more genetic research. Many of the journals cited in the LSU study received different ranks from the CALP titles. For example, Forest Ecology and Management ranked fourth in the LSU study versus twenty- first in the CALP list. Similarly, the cur- rent study ranked Forest Products Journal third compared to a ranking of eighth in the CALP list. The impact factor appear- ing in the JCR for Forest Products Journal increased from .299 in 1998 to .331 in 2001, which corresponds to the higher place- TABLE 8 Summary of Journals Cited and Citing Journals for Each Faculty Rank % of % of % of Professor Total Associate Total Assistant Total Total Number of Faculty 32 24 18 74 Journals Cited: Citations 6,870 43.26 5,547 34.93 3,463 21.81 15,880 Number of Journals 696 37.02 709 37.71 475 25.27 1,269* Citing Journals: Number of Publications 472 48.71 339 34.98 158 16.31 969 Number of Citing Journals 109 41.92 89 34.23 62 23.85 194* Average No. of Publications Per Faculty Member 14.75 14.13 8.78 13.09 *Aggregate totals do not match figures listed. Net totals count each journal title only once, although faculty from two or three ranks may have cited or published in a journal. 370 College & Research Libraries September 2003 TABLE 9 Core List of Forestry Journals Research Project Comparisons LSU Cornell JCR JCR 2001 2002 1994 2001 Impact No. Rank Rank (1) Rank (3) Factor Canadian Journal of Forest Research 1 2 7 1.108 Forest Science 2 1 8 1.089 Forest Products Journal 3 8 26 0.331 Forest Ecology and Management 4 21 11 0.906 Ecology 5 6 N/A 3.704 Tree Physiology 6 N/A 1 2.309 Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 7 9 N/A N/A Soil Science Society of America Journal 8 16 N/A 1.312 Journal of Forestry 9 4 22 0.429 Oecologia 10 12 N/A 2.474 New Phytologist 11 11 N/A 2.53 Plant Physiology 12 3 N/A 5.105 Science 13 15 N/A 23.329 Journal of Environmental Quality 14 N/A N/A 1.155 Silvae Genetica 15 10 25 0.354 Plant Cell and Environment 16 24 N/A 3.296 Physiologia Plantarum 17 7 N/A 1.76 Holzforschung 18 X(2) 10 0.939 Plant and Soil 19 28 N/A 1.229 Environmental Pollution 20 42 N/A 1.56 Canadian Journal of Botany 21 5 N/A 0.949 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 22 N/A N/A 10.896 Theoretical and Applied Genetics 23 N/A N/A 2.438 Wood and Fiber Science 24 X(2) 20 0.453 Nature 25 30 N/A 27.955 Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences 26 N/A N/A 3.009 Phytopathology 27 N/A N/A 2.126 Genetics 28 N/A N/A 4.803 Water Resources Research 29 N/A N/A 1.757 Phytochemistry 30 N/A N/A 1.296 American Journal of Botany 31 13 N/A 2.463 Soil Biology and Biochemistry 32 N/A N/A 1.755 Wetlands 33 N/A N/A 1.137 Ecological Applications 34 N/A N/A 3.335 Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 35 14 N/A 0.922 Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 42 (T) 17 N/A 0.772 Journal of Experimental Botany 62 (T) 18 N/A 2.433 Annual Review of Plant Physiology 126 (T) 19 N/A 17.372 Annals of Botany 323 (T) 20 N/A 1.352 Botanical Gazette 126 (T) 22 N/A N/A Journal of Horticultural Science 465 (T) 23 N/A N/A New Zealand Journal of Forestry Science 51 (T) 25 N/A N/A Tappi Journal 38 (T) 26 N/A 0.369 Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 371 TABLE 9 (CONTINUED) Core List of Forestry Journals Research Project Comparisons LSU Cornell JCR JCR 2001 2002 1994 2001 Impact No. Rank Rank (1) Rank (3) Factor Australian Journal of Botany 165 (T) 27 N/A 0.671 Forestry Chronicle 69 (T) 28 24 0.402 Forestry 90 (T) 31 18 0.52 Journal of Applied Ecology 47 (T) 32 N/A 2.937 HortScience 72 (T) 33 N/A 0.542 Australian Journal of Plant Physiology 81 (T) 34 N/A 1.562 Ecological Monographs 36 (T) 35 N/A 5.551 Journal of Ecology 38 (T) 36 N/A 2.291 Planta; Archiv fur Wissenschaftliche 37 37 N/A 3.349 Acta Horticulturae N/A 38(T) N/A N/A Journal of Wildlife Management 107 (T) 38(T) N/A 1.593 Agronomy Journal 69 (T) 40 N/A 0.88 BioScience 52 (T) 41 N/A 3.295 Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 65 (T) 43 N/A N/A Vegetatio 120 (T) X(2) N/A N/A Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 400 (T) X(2) N/A N/A Agricultual and Forest Meteorology 112 N/A 2 1.775 Journal of Vegetation Science 186 (T) N/A 3 1.73 Trees�Structure and Function 44 (T) N/A 4 1.42 Annals of Forest Science 749 (T) N/A 5 1.156 Agroforestry Systems N/A N/A 6 1.153 Plant Ecology N/A N/A 9 1.059 IAWA Journal N/A N/A 12 0.868 Natural Areas Journal 250 (T) N/A 13 0.778 European Journal of Forest Pathology 400 (T) N/A 14 0.744 Scandanavian Journal of Forest Pathology N/A N/A 15 0.692 Silva Fennica 139 N/A 16 0.649 International Journal of Wildland Fire 576 (T) N/A 17 0.571 New Forests 65 (T) N/A 19 0.519 Wood Science and Technology 72 (T) N/A 21 0.432 Forstwissenschaftliches Centralblatt 179 (T) N/A 23 0.411 Allgemeine Forst Und Jagdzeitung 465 (T) N/A 27 0.309 Forest Pathology N/A N/A 28 0.176 Source: Peter McDonald, �Primary Journals and Serials in Forestry and Agroforestry,� in The Literature of Forestry and Agroforestry, ed. Peter McDonald and James Lassoie (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Pr., 1996), 344�61. 1. Rankings for the developed countries taken from the table �Top Journals Ranked by Number of Citations to Them.� See McDonald, pp. 349�50. 2. Titles appear in the table �Core Forestry and Agroforestry Journals for Developed and Third World Countries.� Titles do not appear in table noted above in footnote 1. See McDonald, pp. 357�61. 3. JCR journals filtered by forestry category and then ranked by impact factor. 4. T = tie. 372 College & Research Libraries September 2003 ment on the LSU core list. The Soil Sci- ence Society of America Journal ranked eighth on the LSU core and sixteenth on the CALP list. Two of the soil journals, Soil Science Society of America Journal and Plant and Soil, ranked higher in the cur- rent study and a third journal, Soil Biol- ogy and Biochemistry, did not appear in the CALP list, providing further evidence of the importance of interdisciplinary jour- nals to forest science research. Both the CALP and LSU core lists con- tain a high number of ecological and en- vironmental journals. Interestingly, five CALP journals with an environmental or ecological emphasis do not appear on the present core list for combined faculty (table 1). However, two of these five titles, Water, Air, and Soil Pollution and Ecologi- cal Monographs, appear on the assistant (both titles) and associate (Ecological Monographs) core lists. Neither appears on the professor core list. The remaining three titles, ranked at the lower end of the CALP core, were frequently cited in the present analysis; Journal of Ecology (ranked 38th) almost made the core and the other two titles, Journal of Applied Ecology and Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, ranked among the top sixty-five titles. Ecology, Oecologia, and Environmental Pol- lution, shared by CALP and LSU lists, ranked higher on the LSU core. The ap- pearance of Ecological Applications and the dramatic rise of Forest Ecology and Man- agement on the LSU core list reflect the current emphasis on ecological research in forest science. Water Resources Research, Wetlands, and Journal of Environmental Quality appear only on the LSU core list of titles. Interestingly, several of the plant science journals with a subject emphasis on botany or horticulture ranked high in the CALP core, but lower in the present study. For example, Canadian Journal of Botany ranked fifth in the CALP list and twenty-first in the current study. American Journal of Botany ranked thirteenth in the CALP core list and thirty-first in the current study. Journal of Experimental Botany ranked eigh- teenth in the CALP list and sixty-second in the current study. Annals of Botany, Bo- tanical Gazette, and Australian Journal of Botany also ranked lower. Several of the horticultural journals, including Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science and HortScience, ranked lower in the cur- rent study than in the CALP study. The decline does not reflect a decrease in JCR impact factors because these have re- mained relatively consistent for journals in both of these areas. Conversely, several of the plant science journals rose signifi- cantly on the LSU core list. In particular, two of the titles, Plant Cell and Environment and Plant and Soil, rose significantly as listed in table 9. The rise of these two plant science titles may perhaps be attributed to the greater interdisciplinarity of both jour- nals. Most of the botanical and horticul- tural journals are less interdisciplinary in nature, and faculty appear to be citing these journals less frequently. Notwith- standing this apparent trend, two of the journals, Canadian Journal of Botany and Journal of the American Society for Horticul- tural Science, retain their status as signifi- cant core titles for forestry on both the LSU and CALP lists. Plant science journals con- stitute a prominent presence on both lists. The current study corroborates and builds on the Cornell study. Six journals appeared in the top ten journals for both studies. Canadian Journal of Forest Research and Forest Science appeared as the top two journals in both studies. The Cornell study identified some up-and-coming journals for the field of forestry, including Tree Physiol- ogy, Holzforschung, and Wood and Fiber Sci- ence. Tree Physiology, which did not garner sufficient citations to make the CALP core list of sixty journals, ranked sixth in the cur- rent study. Similarly, Holzforschung and Wood and Fiber Science, which appeared on CALP’s core list of sixty journals, but not on the CALP ranked core, ranked eigh- teenth and twenty-fourth, respectively, in the current study. Two additional titles iden- tified by CALP as up-and-coming journals, Trees—Structure and Function and New For- ests, ranked forty-fourth and sixty-fifth, re- spectively, in the LSU study. These titles did not appear in the top 50 percent of cumula- Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 373 tive citations, but their placement on the LSU list shows that they received a fairly large number of citations. In fact, Trees— Structure and Function ranked twenty-first in the assistant professors’ core list, indi- cating its prominence for researchers new to the field. The investigators designed the meth- odology of the study to minimize bias and outliers. In most cases, a large number of citations from a noncore journal by a single professor would not have been sufficient to make the core list. However, one of the core titles, Journal of Chemical TABLE 10 Journals Cited Categorized by AGRICOLA Subject Category Codes No. of No. of % of Overall % Overall % Subject Description Journals Citations Citations of Journals of Citations Forestry Code(s) Only: 4.1 22.36 K000-K130 Forestry Production 30 2,551 71.86 K200 Forest Management 7 35 0.99 K500-K530 Forest Products 14 964 27.15 Total 52 3,550 100 Forestry and Secondary Codes: 1.1 7.35 K000-K001 Forestry 9 686 58.78 K200 Forest Management 1 431 36.93 K500-K530 Forest Products 3 48 4.11 K810 Forest Fire Management 1 2 0.18 Total 14 1,167 100 Non-Forestry Code(s) Only: 40.19 53.85 A000 Agriculture 15 65 0.76 B100-B200 Geography, Meteorology & Climatology 8 86 1.01 C100 Agricultural Education 1 1 0.01 E100-E550 Agricultural Economics 16 88 1.02 F000-F900 Plant Science 105 2,418 28.27 H000 Pesticides 1 2 0.02 J000-J700 Soil Sciences 18 493 5.76 L000-L832 Animal Science 25 82 0.96 M120-M300 Aquaculture; Aquatic 5 99 1.16 Biology and Ecology N000 Agricultural Engineering and Safety 1 16 0.19 P000-P300 Natural Resources 38 883 10.33 Q000-Q500 Food Science 5 35 0.41 S000-S200 Agricultural Products 2 3 0.04 T000 Human Nutrition 2 2 0.02 U000 Home Economics 3 4 0.05 W000 Pollution 20 342 4 X000-X200, X400-X800 Auxiliary Disciplines 106 799 9.34 X300 Life Sciences (Auxiliary Disciplines) 139 3,134 36.65 Total 510 8,552 100 No Codes Assigned: 693 2,611 54.61 16.44 Totals 1,269 15,880 374 College & Research Libraries September 2003 Information and Computer Sciences, re- ceived over 90 percent of the citations from a highly prolific team of research- ers. One professor and one associate pro- fessor cited the journal numerous times, and hence the title appears on both of the core lists for these individual ranks. The journal is not cited by any other faculty member in the study and should be con- sidered an outlier to the core. Ecological Monographs ranked thirty-sixth and would replace Journal of Chemical Informa- tion and Computer Sciences on the present core list. Ecological Monographs also ranked thirty-fifth on CALP’s ranked core list. Table 10 reveals that forestry research- ers predominantly cite journals assigned nonforestry subject AGRICOLA SCC. Not surprisingly, the journals assigned a pri- mary Life Sciences SCC (a subdivision of Auxiliary Disciplines) received the larg- est percentage of citations (36.65%) for nonforestry journals. Of the 139 journals assigned the life sciences code, nine ap- pear in the core list of journals cited (table 1). These titles include Ecology, Oecologia, Science, and Theoretical and Applied Genet- ics ranked fifth, tenth, thirteenth, and twenty-third, respectively. The Plant Sci- ence SCC journals garnered the second highest percentage (28.27%) of citations for nonforestry journals. Ten of the jour- nals assigned a primary Plant Science SCC appear in the core title list (table 1). These titles include Plant Physiology, Plant Cell and Environment, Physiologia Plantarum, and Plant and Soil, which ranked twelfth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth, respectively. Faculty cited a much smaller number of articles from journals assigned forestry codes, just 29.71 percent of the overall citations. The data in table 10 indicate that forestry fac- ulty heavily rely on interdisciplinary jour- nals for their research. A large number of journals from sev- eral disciplines constitute the present core list. The core list contains only ten jour- nals specific to forestry. However, these ten journals ranked highly on the core and account for 24.9 percent of total citations, illustrating their importance to forest sci- ence research. Of the twenty-five remain- ing journals, 25.3 percent (over half the citations needed to meet 50%) constitute a significant portion of the core. The core list contains ten plant science journals, or 9.9 percent of total citations. Seven jour- nals, 7.8 percent of total citations, are de- voted to ecological and environmental re- search. Ecological journals include Ecol- ogy, Oecologia, Ecological Applications; and it should be noted that several of the plant science journals include an ecological component. Environmental journals in- clude Journal of Environmental Quality, Plant Cell and Environment, Environmental Pollution, Water Resources Research, and Wetlands. Genetics and soil science jour- nals also are strongly represented on the core list. Differences exist in citation patterns among the three faculty ranks for the plant science journals. The shift in re- search emphasis is strikingly evident among both the assistant and associate professors. The top half of the core jour- nals for assistant professors (table 4) con- sists of five plant science journals, includ- ing New Phytologist and Plant Physiology, which rank ninth and eleventh, respec- tively. The top half of the core journals for associate professors (table 3) consists of four plant science journals, with the two preceding titles ranking fifth and eleventh, respectively. In comparison, plant science journals do not appear at all in the top half of the core journals for pro- fessors (table 2), with Plant Physiology ap- pearing sixteenth and New Phytologist not appearing at all. For assistant professors, the concentration of plant science journals is weighted at the top portion of the core journal list, whereas the concentration for the professors is weighted toward the bot- tom of their core list. The journals are dis- persed fairly equally among the core list for associate professors. The percentage of total citations for plant science journals varied among the three faculty ranks: 6.2 percent for professors, 11.2 percent for as- sociate professors, and 10.5 percent for as- sistant professors. (See table 11.) Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 375 The percentage of total citations for the ecological and environmental journals varied significantly among the three fac- ulty ranks: 6.5 percent for professors, 8.9 percent for associate professors, and 14.7 percent for assistant professors. Only five ecological and environmental journals appear on the professor core list. The as- sociate core list includes seven titles, and the assistant professor core includes eight ecological and environmental journals. The evidence reveals that assistant pro- fessors and associate professors conduct more research using ecological and envi- ronmental journals than full professors do. Indeed, assistant professors appear to cite over twice as many ecological and environmental journals as professors. Clearly, the assistant and associate pro- fessors cited significantly more ecologi- cal and environmental journals than pro- fessors. (See table 12.) Citation patterns in the present study reflect the “modern ‘ecosystem’ approach” to forest science outlined by the Society of American Foresters. The field of forestry is becoming more interdisciplinary and ho- listic in scope. Changes to the curriculum at forestry schools emphasize the integra- tion of ecological forestry practices and re- search. Assistant professors, with newly minted Ph.D.’s in forest science, reflect these changes in their research interests and cited the largest percentage of core journals emphasizing ecological and en- vironmental research. Both assistant and associate professors cited a large number of journals devoted to plant science, and faculty from all three ranks frequently cited interdisciplinary journals in their publica- tions. The core lists illustrate the impor- tance of ecological and interdisciplinary research to forest science. Conclusion The present study produced a current core list of forestry titles with important differences from, and similarities to, the Cornell study. Several titles appear only in the LSU core list. The study produced separate core lists for assistant, associate, and full professor faculty ranks, and re- TABLE 11 Combined List of Core Plant Science Journals Cited for Each Faculty Rank (1990�2002) Professors Associates Assistants Core Rank Core Rank Core Rank Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 American Journal of Botany 21 N/A N/A Canadian Journal of Botany N/A 15 N/A Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science N/A 26 N/A Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions N/A 25 N/A New Phytologist N/A 5 9 Physiologia Plantarum 22 21 10 Phytochemistry 15 N/A N/A Phytopathology N/A 14 N/A Plant and Soil N/A 29 8 Plant Cell and Environment 25 17 7 Plant Cell Reports 26 N/A N/A Plant Physiology 16 11 11 Plant Science Citations 425 619 362 Total Citations 6,870 5,547 3,463 Percent of Total Citations 6.2 11.2 10.5 376 College & Research Libraries September 2003 vealed significant differences in citation patterns among the three groups. Assis- tant professors and associate professors used more journals with ecological, en- vironmental, and plant science subject emphases than full professors did. The study also yielded important data on the AGRICOLA SCC designations for the uni- verse of journals. The current study provides information useful to collection development librarians in analyzing holdings relevant to forestry. It may be particularly useful to determine titles of interdisciplinary importance for a library collection. In addition, the core list may be useful to forestry faculty in mak- ing promotion and tenure decisions, and may serve as a guide for faculty to iden- tify journal titles for potential publications. Indexers for agriculture databases, for ex- ample, AGRICOLA indexers, may wish to consult the core when deciding which for- estry titles to cover. Further studies of a national and re- gional nature are recommended to cor- roborate the findings of the present analy- sis and analyze any differences in citation patterns among other groups of forest sci- ence researchers. Studies are needed in the future to track and analyze citation differences among the three faculty ranks. More citation studies are needed to ana- lyze differences, if any, that exist between monographs and journal literature. Cornell University published its study in 1994, relying largely on data from the mid-1980s. The present study analyzed publications from 1990–2002; updated studies for core lists in forestry are needed on a more regular basis. Notes 1. John A. Helms, “Forest, Forestry, Forester: What Do These Terms Mean,” Journal of For- estry 100, no. 8 (2002): 18. 2. Ibid., 16. 3. Thomas W. Steele and Jeffrey C. Stier, “The Impact of Interdisciplinary Research in the Environmental Sciences: A Forestry Case Study,” Journal of the American Society for Information TABLE 12 Combined List of Core Ecological and Environmental Journals Cited for Each Faculty Rank (1990�2002) Professors Associates Assistants Core Rank Core Rank Core Rank Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 American Midland Naturalist 28 N/A N/A Applied and Environmental Microbiology N/A 31 N/A Ecological Applications N/A N/A 15 Ecological Monographs N/A N/A 22 Ecology 6 19 5 Environmental Pollution N/A 7 N/A Functional Ecology N/A N/A 17 Global Change Biology N/A N/A 18 Journal of Environmental Quality 20 10 25 Oecologia 24 22 2 Water, Air, and Soil Pollution N/A 24 14 Water Resources Research N/A 12 N/A Wetlands 18 N/A N/A Ecological and Environmental Citations 449 493 508 Total Citations 6,870 5,547 3,463 Percent of Total Citations 6.5 8.9 14.7 Establishing a Core List of Journals for Forestry 377 Science 51 (2000): 476. 4. V. Alaric Sample, et al., “Forestry Education: Adapting to the Changing Demands on Pro- fessionals,” Journal of Forestry 97, no. 9 (Sept. 1999): 4. 5. Bob Blackmon, Louisiana State University, School of Renewable Natural Resources, “Director’s Message.” Available online from http://www.fwf.lsu.edu/directors_message.htm. 6. Mary M. Case, “The Impact of Serial Costs on Library Collections.” Available online from http://www.arl.org/newsltr/218/costimpact.html. 7. Paul D. Burnam, “Private Liberal Arts Colleges and the Costs of Scientific Journals: A Perennial Dilemma,” College & Research Libraries 59 (Sept. 1998): 406–20. 8. Case, “The Impact of Serial Costs on Library Collections.” 9. Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory, 35th ed. New York: Bowker, 1997; Ulrich’s Peri- odicals Directory, 39th ed. New Providence, N.J.: R.R. Bowker, 2001. 10. S. C. Bradford, “Sources of Information on Specific Subjects,” Engineering 137 (Jan. 1934): 86. 11. Kathleen E. Joswick and Jeanne Koekkoek Stierman, “The Core List Mirage: Comparison of the Journals Frequently Consulted by Faculty and Students,” College & Research Libraries 58 (Jan. 1997): 48. 12. Lois Kuyper-Rushing, “Identifying Uniform Core Journal Titles for Music Libraries: A Dissertation Citation Study,” College & Research Libraries 60 (Mar. 1999): 153–63. 13. Thomson/ISI, “Subject Categories,” ISI Journal Citation Reports, Science Edition, 2001 [CD- ROM] (Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information, 2002). 14. Thomas E. Nisonger, “Use of the Journal Citation Reports for Serials Management in Re- search Libraries: An Investigation of the Effect of Self-citation on Journal Rankings in Library and Information Science and Genetics,” College & Research Libraries 61 (May 2000): 263–75. 15. Thomson/ISI, “What Is the JCR?,” ISI Journal Citation Reports, Science Edition, 2001 [CD- ROM] (Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information, 2002). 16. Nisonger, “Use of the Journal Citation Reports for Serials Management in Research Librar- ies,” 263–75. 17. Claudia Lascar and Loren D. Mendelsohn, “An Analysis of Journal Use by Structural Biologists with Applications for Journal Collection Development Decisions,” College & Research Libraries 62 (Sept. 2001): 422–33. 18. Angela M. Gooden, “Citation Analysis of Chemistry Doctoral Dissertations: An Ohio State University Case Study,” Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship no. 32 (fall 2001). Available online from http://www.istl.org/istl/01-fall/refereed.html. 19. Louise S. Zipp, “Core Serial Titles in an Interdisciplinary Field: The Case of Environmen- tal Geology,” Library Resources & Technical Services 43 (Jan. 1999): 28–36. 20. Ibid., 30. 21. Luti Salisbury, “Entomology Faculty Publications as a Source of Information for Collec- tion Development: A Case Study at the University of Arkansas.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the United States Agricultural Information Network, Champaign, Ill., Apr. 2003. 22. Y.M. Patil, “Agropedology Literature: Evaluation and Citation Analysis,” Agropedology 6 (1996):107–12. 23. Segun Adewole, “Selecting Livestock Periodicals through Citation Analysis Technique,” Information Processing & Management 23 (1987): 629–38. 24. Steele and Stier, “The Impact of Interdisciplinary Research in the Environmental Sciences,” 476–84. 25. Stephanie C. Haas and Kate Lee, “Research Journal Usage by the Forestry Faculty at the University of Florida, Gainesville,” Collection Building 11, no. 2 (1991): 23–25. 26. Pamela J. Jakes and Andra Slimak VanDyne, “Forestry Literature: Who’s Publishing What Where?” Journal of Forestry 85, no. 9 (Sept. 1987): 33–36. 27. Peter McDonald and James Lassoie, eds., The Literature of Forestry and Agroforestry (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Pr., 1996), ix. 28. Peterson’s Graduate Programs in the Physical Sciences, Mathematics, Agricultural Sciences, the Environment & Natural Sciences, 35th ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Peterson’s, 2001).