Mapping the literature of cytotechnology

The major purpose of this study was to identify and assess indexing coverage of core journals in cytotechnology. It was part of a larger project sponsored by the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section of the Medical Library Association to map the literature of allied health. Three representative journals in cytotechnology were selected and subjected to citation analysis to determine what journals, other publication types, and years were cited and how often. Bradford's Law of Scattering was applied to the resulting list of cited journals to identify core titles in the discipline, and five indexes were searched to assess coverage of these core titles. Results indicated that the cytotechnology journal literature had a small core but wide dispersion: one third of the 21,021 journal citations appeared in only 3 titles; another third appeared in an additional 26 titles; the remaining third were scattered in 1,069 different titles. Science Citation Index Expanded rated highest in indexing coverage of the core titles, followed by MEDLINE, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, HealthSTAR, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). The study's results also showed that journals were the predominantly cited format and that citing authors relied strongly on more recent literature.