A citation study of the characteristics of the linguistics literature

By analyzing the citation patterns of the linguistics literature, the authors provide a bibliometric description of the discipline that will help librarians who have reference, instruction, or collection development responsibilities in this area understand it better. One important aspect of such an understanding is determining where linguistics classifies within the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences. Based on several of the citation patterns discovered, namely the importance of recent publications to the field, and the prominence of journals as a primary vehicle of scholarly communication, this analysis concludes that linguistics more closely resembles the disciplines of the social sciences.