Polish Polar Research as a medium of international scientific communication 1996-2002

Abstract

The multidisciplinary journal Polish Polar Research is bibliometrically ana− lysed as a medium of international scientific communication in light of current citation data from SCI Ex 1996–2002. Despite its world−wide distribution and distinctive visibility in the polar society, the journal’s two−years impact factor is invariably not very high (below 0.35) because the cited papers are mostly from the 1980s. The increasing participation of foreign (co)authors in the Polish quarterly, paired with the slowly growing number of citing articles in SCI Ex are already promising steps to the immediate information transfer and subse− quently improved brief−term journal impact. Citation links with polar investigators from Germany, and also from Great Britain, Spain and the USA are clearly manifested, espe− cially in fields of marine Antarctic ecology and biology. Even if Polish Polar Research may successfully compete with several low−rated journals from different countries indexed in SCI Ex in related categories, its continuing internationalization is urgently required.