Jointly published by AkadØmiai Kiad, Budapest Scientometrics, and Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht Vol. 61, No. 2 (2004) 221251 Received April 26, 2004 Address for correspondence: BRANIMIR KLAI Ruer Bokovi Institute, Bijeni"ka c. 54, P.O.Box 180, 10002 Zagreb, Croatia E-mail: klaic@irb.hr 01389130/2004/US $ 20.00 Copyright ' 2004 AkadØmiai Kiad, Budapest All rights reserved Croatian scientific publications in top journals according to the Science Citation Index for the 19802000 period ZVJEZDANA BENCETI KLAI, a BRANIMIR KLAI b a Faculty of Science, Andrija Mohorovi:i; Geophysical Institute, University of Zagreb, Zagreb (Croatia) b Ru@er Bokovi; Institute, Zagreb (Croatia) A top journal is defined as a journal which is within the first 10% of journals ranked by impact factor in the SCI list, within a particular scientific subfield, for the year considered. Journals which were for 11 or more years within the first 10% were considered top journals during the whole period even though they were not within the first 10%, in some of the years covered by this study. In the period from 1980 to 2000, the Croatian scientists affiliated with research institutions within the Republic of Croatia, published a total of 13,021 papers in journals covered by the Science Citation Index (SCI). Out of these papers, only 2,720 were published in top journals. This amounts to 20.9% of the total, and this is below the world average of 29.5% for the same scientific subfields. Out of the above 2,720 publications, 1,250 (46.0%) were published in international collaboration, and 335 (12.3%) papers were Meeting Abstracts. The Croatian scientists were most productive in the main scientific fields: Physics (875 papers; 32.2%), Medicine (786 papers; 28.9%), and Chemistry (580 papers; 21.3%). All others fields, taken together, comprised 17.6% of the total scientific output. Of the 786 medical papers, 290 were Meeting Abstracts, or 36.9% of the total output in the field of Medicine, and medical Meeting Abstracts represent 86.6% of the total number of abstracts (335). Articles (2,060) represent 75.7% of the total Croatian scientific output in top journals. Introduction Previous scientometric analyses 1,2 had the purpose to establish the overall Croatian scientific output covered by the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI). From these data, it was possible to calculate the scientific productivity per research-year in any particular main scientific field and subfield, to find centers of scientific excellence in the Republic of Croatia, and to classify individual scientists with respect to their scientific production and the quality of the journals used for the publication of their papers. These studies showed that papers published by Croatian scientists, who work in scientific fields covered by the SSCI and the A&HCI (approximately 25% of all Croatian scientists) comprised less than 8% of the total Croatian scientific output