Growth Rate in Scientific Publications as Speculated by the SCI - Essay Example

The total number of journals verified for the year 1950 was approximately 60,000 while the estimate for the year 2000 was approximately 1,000,000. Price made use of the figures of all scientific journals that had been there within the past duration and not the journals presently being published. All the same, this was never the key source of error. In the year, 1963 Price proceeded to work making use of several data in abstract compendia for the years 1907 to 1960. The study conducted in the years 1907 and 2007 by use of available statistics from several literature databases, the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and the Science Citation Index (SCI) have indicated findings relating to the Growth rate of scientific publications.

Significantly, the intention of the study was to give information regarding the growth and development of Scientific Publications (Garfield, 27). The study is descriptive in that; it gives descriptive data on which the research was based on and also includes the statistical processes used in the description of the population in the study. The findings from the study assist in organization and data description. The variables involved were the data from traditional scientific publishing. Traditional scientific publishing; publications in peer-reviewed journals, is still considered to be increasing though there are large variances between some sectors.

There exist no signs that the growth rate has decreased within the past 50 years. At the same time, publications making use of channels, for instance, open archives, home pages, and conference proceedings are reported to be developing at a higher rate. The growth rate for the SCI was compensating for a declining section of the traditional scientific literature (Garfield, 29). There also exist some open signs that the compensation by the SCI is generally minimal in a section of the scientific areas with the largest development rate involving engineering and computer sciences.

From the reading, it is obvious that the populace being considered is the humans, and this is with respect to how they rate scientific publications. The common characteristics of this particular population are that they possess an almost equal reading ability with so high IQ. Additionally, this population has different views towards both scientific and traditional publications. The technique applied in the collection of data relating to the growth of scientific publications were open-access archives, conference proceedings, and already published publications existing on the internet.

The key role of these techniques of data collection was to show that there is an increasing trend of use of scientific publications particularly in scientific fields. This data was partially reflected in the scientific databases. Apart from the above-mentioned methods of data collection, the study as well applied the use of a statistical technique of data collection (Garfield, 31). The technique was majorly descriptive and entailed the use of sample surveys. These were surveys conducted with the aim of getting information from a sample of the population, so as to approximate populace attributes.