Availability/accessibility of periodicals with highest value of impact factor between 2004-2009 in social sciences in university libraries in Ankara

Abstract

Nowadays , libraries slog on rapidly increasing costs of periodicals. Their insufficient budget to meet the increase creates a big problem. Although the rise of subscriber prices in social science periodicals is not as fast as in the science, medicine and health sciences periodicals, the rise of prices still exists. Social science periodicals are so valuable and have a great importance in the library collection. The need for up to date information can be met most rapidly by periodicals. Therefore, the importance of social science periodicals still remains. It is very difficult to create a collection of periodicals. Periodicals form dynamic, constantly increasing and the most complex kind of collections in libraries. Therefore, when subscribing or canceling a periodical, great care is needed. And this can be possible by taking into account of specific evaluation criteria.The Impact Factor (IF), used over a quarter- century, is a criteria used to determine the use of periodicals.Based on numerical data and thus being neutral and also in terms of functionality , the IF is a valuable criteria which does not lose its usage demand by librarians. In our study, the availability and accessibility of social science periodicals with the highest IF taken from Journal Citation Reports Social Sciences Edition, 2011 published by Institute for Scientific Information at the university libraries in Ankara were investigated. In this study, it is desired to understand how university libraries abide by the IF. If university libraries desire, it is aimed to present a profile of themselves in terms of their periodicals collection. As a result, the availability and accessibility of the social sciences journals with the highest IF are respectively %30.76 and %100. As a result of data obtained , the hypothesis which is "The availability/accessibility rate of social sciences journals with the highest IF at the university libraries in Ankara is high" is confirmed. The availability rate is lower than expected but eventually it is possible to access to the same resource electronically. Only the 166 way of obtaining resource is different. After all, resources which are needed can be obtained even from abroad through interlibrary cooperation. In this context, even the lack of physically availability of printed resources in information center does not create a big problem