ence have been examined. The list of these 400 articleswas published in a series of essaysby Eugene Garfield(Garfield, 1990a, 1990b, 199Od, 1991). An importantfi-action of these highly cited articles are CitationClassicsR and, therefore, their authors’ commentarieshave been published in
Current Contents.
Referentes tothese
Current Contents
issues was also published in theaforementioned list. Among the 400 most-cited articlesof al1 imes, 188 articles were Citation ClassicsRwhenGarfield’s essays n the 400 most-cited articles appeared.In addition, 1 have reviewed al1Citation ClassicsRcom-mentaries published in
Current Contents
in every issue
sitlce Garfield’s essays isted the 400 most-cited articlesofall times. This wasdone to identify additional CitationClassicsR commentaries published that correspond tothe list of the 400 aforementioned most-cited articles. 1have found 17 additional commentaries. 1 have read al1these commentaries to identify articles whose authorshad difficulties in doing the research or in getting thempublished.Most Citation ClassicsR commentaries were. locatedin
Current Contents
issues iled in libraries from the fiveuniversities in the Madrid area and in some research n-stitutes in Madrid. Howevei, the lnstitute for Scientificlnformation provided some Citation ClassicsR ommen-taries published in old
Current Confents
issues hat werehard to find in the. Madrid area.To study thc di&icultiesencountered by individual pa-pers 1have used a classification schehe consisting in twobroad categories:
a) Authors cncountcrcd difficultics during thc rcvisionphasc
but
thc manuscript was finally publishcd in
thc
samc journal to which thc manuscript was submittcd.On somc occasions. authors had to makc changcs orfullill refcrccs’ suggcstions or rcqucsts for additionaldata. On olhcroccasions. papcrs wcrc rcjcctcd but thcauthors argued or inquircd and Ihc papcr was linallyacccptcd.b) Manuscript wcrc rcjcctcd and authors had to look forncw journals 10 publish Ihcm.
1 must note that 1 have idcntified two papers whoseauthors encountered prepublicalion dificultics. Thc au-thors ofthe highly cited papers encountcred some minor
difficulties
before the publication process due to factorsother than refcrces. These instances have not bccn takenin account bccause hesc kinds of problems actually have
no relcvancc lo thc focus of this article.
Results
and
Dìscussion
Thcrc are 22 Citation Classics’ commrn~arics( 10.7%) that mcntion somc dificulty or rcsist;lncc in do-ing or publishing thc rcscarch rcported in lbc art~clc. .fhc
citation frcqucncy Iòr
thc articlcs with problcms rangcfrom I .675 lo 0.390. It is worlh noting lhat. actor-dtng to
Gafield, the top 1,400 articles cited at least 1,000 timesrepresent just 0.004% of all cited publications in the1945-
1988 Science Citation Index
database (Garfield,1990a). Table 1 includes the bibliographic data on themost-cited Citation ClassicsRarticles which encountereddifficulties. According to the lists included in the afore-mentioned essaysby Eugene Gafield, three articles in-cluded in Table 1 would eventually become the most-cited of their joumals. Next, the articles in Table 1 areanalyzed in more detail. Data on the process of publica-tion of these papers were obtained from the ISl prologue
to each
Citation ClassicsR commentary and from thecommentary Asclf,
As
noted above, to study the individ-ual articles 1 have used a classification scheme consistingof two categories:a)
Difficulties during the
revision phase: In this cate-
gory 1 have listed those papers in which the
journal refer-ees raised questions and posed problems but the paperswere finally published. On some occasions, authors hadto make changesor fulfill referees’suggestionor requests
for additional data.
-The referce of thc 1967 papcr by Bernard Hin on selectiveextraction of polyoma DNA from cell cultures sent him a sin-gle-spaccd three-page report in a very paternalistic tone. The
referee’seport raiscdmany questions
nd
requested additionaldata. As Hirt recognized. thc referee worked
hard and made
somc goods rcmarks. As ir often occurs. the manuscript wentinto a drawcr for two and a half months unGl. with thc hclp ofsomconc, Hirl rcwrolc it.-Thc 1959 articlc hy I lavcl. Edcr. and Bragdon dcscribcs anaccuratc and
cllicicr~t
mcthod for dctcrmining lipoprolcincomposition. Thc difiicultics cncountcrcd hy thc authors whcnthcy suhmirtcd thc manuscript to thc prcsligious Jottrml N/’C/irli~cl/ //11’<‘.s/;~~n/ro,r had
to
do with conccpts. At thai timethc journal did not acccpt tcrminology thai has sincc bccomcstandard jargon ofthc licld.-Thc origin of thc IY Stcrnbcrgcr and collcagucs’ highlycitcd articlc is an assignmcnt hc poscd to Stcrnbcrgcr’s stu-dcnts. Thc uncxpcctcd rcsutt was a ncw mcthod lo visualizeerythrocytcs and spirochctcs. Ludwig Stcrnbcrgcr and col-leagucs had somc difiiculty in Publishing the work bccause oneofthc referees fclt that thc findings wcre loo insignificant. How-evcr, thc mcthod rcportcd in thc artictc has widc applications inthc study of fixcd normal and pathologic tissuc. Thc principlcundcrlying this mcthod yiclds high scnsitivity bccausc ofinhcr-ently low background.-Two rcvicwcrs could no1 agr-CC as to thc acccptability of thr1967 papcr by Rcvcrly Murphy on mcthods to mcasurc stcroidsby competitivc protcin-binding radioassay. A third rcfcrcc
wus
involvcd and al1 threc had many suggcslions for rcvision. Thcrcvision of this papcr tool\ wcll ovcr a ycar and. according 10Murphy. this dcl;cy WIS h:umIùl bcc;~usc somc ~ollcagucs towhom shc had g~\‘cn thc mcthods publishcd carlicr.
304 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE-Apvl1996
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