A bibliometric analysis of publications by the Chemistry Department, Seoul National University, Korea, 1992-1998

This study examined research performance of chemists at Seoul National University (SNU), the most prestigious university in Korea, using the numbers of articles appearing in journals and the numbers of citations received by those articles covered by Science Citation Index (SCI) CD-ROM, 1992-1998. A total of 651 papers published by the 29 faculty members of the Chemistry Department at SNU and indexed by SCI during the seven-year period were considered. US and Korean journals published in English were utilised predominantly, followed by UK journals. Major journals used by Korean chemists are Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society (Korea), Tetrahedron Letters (UK), Journal of Physical Chemistry A (USA), Journal of Chemical Physics (USA) and Journal of the American Chemical Society (USA). In addition, half the Korean papers were published in journals having an impact factor of one or more. Among the 651 publications, 388 were cited 2,376 times. Considering the number of citations received by Korean papers, in terms of journal country, papers published in US, UK and Dutch journals have a higher visibility than others. No correlation between the number of papers by a particular chemist and the average number of citations per paper for that chemist was indicated by the study.