Library and Information Science

It is generally assumed that there is an imbalance of science and technology information between Japan and European countries or U.S.A.. To clarify the validity of this opinion, an accessibility of a sample of 211 articles published by Japanese science and technology journal in 1974 and 1984 are examined. These articles are searched by foreign databases (BIOSIS Previews, CAB, CA Search, COMPENDEX, EMBASE, INIS, INSPEC, MEDLINE, SCISEARCH) and Japanese databases or abstacting and indexing services (Japanese Agricultural Science Index, Japan Centra Revuo Medicina, Japanese Periodical Index, JICST file).

The result are: (1) These articles are well covered, especially Japanese database or abstracting and indexing services cover more than 80% of articles in medicine engineering, agriculture fields, (2) Articles written in English have a higher rate of coverage in the foreign databases, (3) About 70% of articles have summaries, which were mostly in English, (4) A comparison between 1974 and 1984 shows that the coverage in 1984 was higher than in 1974.

These results indicate that to improve an accessibility of abstracting and indexing services in Japan is urgently needed to solve “imbalance of information”.