Bibliometric analysis of academic journals in the area of materials science and engineering for the benchmarking of materials transactions

Bibliometric analysis has been conducted against eight representative academic journals, Materials Transactions, Acta Materialia, Scripta Materialia, Journal of Alloys and Compounds, Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A, Materials Science and Engineering A, ISIJ International and Science and Technology of Advanced Materials in order to make clear and benchmark the current status of Materials Transactions in the area of materials science and engineering. The status of each journal has been analyzed and comprehensively discussed based on the annual trend of number of published papers, citation per paper, journal impact factor, number and country affiliations of authors, rate of zero-citation articles and so forth. The major conclusions are as following: (1) the decrease in zero-citation articles in Material Transactions and ISIJ International is very slower against passed time than other six journals, and thus approximately 3% of papers in Material Transactions published in 2004 remain un- cited. One of the reasons of this observed trend may be poor self-citation by the authors themselves. (2) The average number of references per paper in Material Transactions and ISIJ International is 28, which is less than 40 in the other six journals. (3) The most of the references are generally cited in the introductory part in order to review the previous related works, explain the originality of their research. These results suggest that the coverage of previous papers and the claim of the expected impact given by their research may be insufficient and thus give a negative effect on the citation for Material Transactions.