247 ISSN 1019-3316, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2008, Vol. 78, No. 3, pp. 247–256. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2008. Original Russian Text © I.V. Zibareva, V.V. Pislyakov, T.N. Teplova, O.M. Nefedov, 2008, published in Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2008, Vol. 78, No. 6, pp. 490–499. Scientific journals, which first appeared in the sec- ond half of the 17th century (the oldest one that still exists, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society , has been published since 1665) [1], have made an invaluable contribution to the formation and develop- ment of modern science. They are both a medium and a means of professional communication among scien- tists. Beginning with the second half of the 20th cen- tury, bibliometric (scientometric and informetric) methods [2], based on the use of statistical data about publications, their citations, and some other indicators, have been used to obtain objective characteristics of the status and trends in the development of scientific jour- nals. At present, bibliometric analysis is constantly used with regard to both foreign and Russian periodi- cals, in particular, chemical journals [3–12]. Notwith- standing the fact that bibliometrics is primarily a retro- spective and descriptive science, systematized biblio- metric data create a quantitative basis for analysis, which, in a number of cases, allows us to identify some unobvious features and trends in the development of one journal or another and formulate proposals to improve its efficiency and prestige in the professional community. Contemporary bibliometric studies usually take advantage of scientific and technical information databases (DBs) as a source material [2, 13, 14]. The bibliometric analysis of the journal Uspekhi Khimii over 75 years (1932–2006) was based on the authoritative global DBs Chemical Abstracts (CA) and Science Citation Index (SCI, a variant of SciSearch) of the international science and technology network STN International [15] and the main informetric laws (Lotka’s, Zipf’s, and Bradford’s [16]). 1 The findings were verified with the statistical package SPSS 12.0 to comply with Lotka’s, Zipf’s, and Bradford’s laws. The online search for the Uspekhi Khimii publica- tions and their citations in the CA (a retrospect until 1907 [18]) and SCI (a retrospect until 1974 [19]) DBs was conducted in February–March 2007. Both DBs refer Uspekhi Khimii to core journals. BIBLIOMETRIC INDICATORS The journal Uspekhi Khimii (USP) has been pub- lished since 1932, and its English version Russian Chemical Reviews (RCR), since 1960. During the CA DB search time, 4281 publications were registered: the 1932–1998 publications were registered by the original Russian edition USP, and the 1999–2006 publications, by the translated version RCR. The SCI DB revealed 2324 articles published from 1973 through 2006. 2 Overall, the simultaneous use of the CA and SCI DBs retrieved 4403 nonidentical journal publications for the period 1932–2006. Furthermore, the original and trans- lated versions of articles were regarded as one publica- tion. All this constituted about 90% of the total publica- tions (the remaining 10% includes primarily articles from Uspekhi khimii that were first published in foreign 1 The first scientometric analysis of the journal Uspekhi Khimii (1932–1971) was conducted by Yu.V. Granovskii et al. in the 1980s on the basis of the SCI printed version [3, 4]. The method- ology of bibliometric analysis of scientific journals based on the STN International DBs (in particular, on the simultaneous use of the CA and SCI DBs), as well as some limitations and errors con- cerning Russian-language publications in English-language DBs, is considered in [8–12, 17]. 2 Note that the CA DB has no publications for the year 1942, and the SCI DB, no publications for the year 1986. In addition, when the citation of Uspekhi Khimii was investigated, we found articles that did not show up during the primary search of the journal pub- lications in the DB, which may be related to DB information input errors. Organization of Research Over the past few decades, quantitative methods of evaluating scientific work, including the citation index of research publications, have been finding expanding applications. The citation index underlies not only the eval- uation of the efficiency of individual scientists but also the rating of scientific editions. The authors share their experience in bibliometric research based on the data of the science and technology network STN International. DOI: 10.1134/S101933160803012X Bibliometric Analysis of the Journal Uspekhi Khimii (Russian Chemical Reviews) I. V. Zibareva, V. V. Pislyakov, T. N. Teplova, and O. M. Nefedov* *Inna Vladimirovna Zibareva is head of the STN center at the Vorozhtsov Institute of Organic Chemistry, Novosibirsk, RAS Siberian Branch. Vladimir Vladimirovich Pislyakov is a deputy director of the library for control over electronic resources at the State University–Higher School of Economics. Tat’yana Nikolae- vna Teplova is managing editor of the journal Uspekhi Khimii (Russian Chemical Reviews). Academician Oleg Matveevich Nefedov is an RAS adviser and editor-in-chief of the journal Uspekhi Khimii (Russian Chemical Reviews).