Abstract

This paper attempts to define some general characteristics of the Abstracting Journals published in Korea as evidenced in those published during last ten years. This purpose is achieved by comparing the results of the two studies conducted by the author in 1984 and in 1994. Both studies were conducted to present the state of the art in the abstracting services in Korea. The major conclusions made in this paper are summarised as follows： (1) Researchers and professionals working in a small number of subject fields are benefited by the abstracting journals, which provide current-awareness services of recent achievements in research and development in Korea. Those in most of the fields have no abstracting journals of their own, and naturally they have no substantial abstract-ing services. Even many researchers and professionals in the fields that have some abstracting journals are not informed of research results in their fields because the abstracting journals are scattered in many narrow subjects and in many cases, the abstracting journals only cover publications in some specific forms and kinds. (2) Abstracting journals that cover more than two subject fields, which are supposed to be of more or less help to the researchers and professionals in the subject fields that have no abstracting journals published in their fields, have rapidly increased in number in the past ten years. Most of suh abstracting journals carry thesis and dissertation abstracts, and the rest, those of research papers published in specific places, in specific forms, by specific institutions, and of reports of research projects sponsored by specific foundations. These abstracting journals are not of the kind that comprehensively provide researchers in related fields with current awareness of publications of research results in Korea. (3) Most of the abstracting Journals existing in Korea are Published by institutions of higher education and research institutes, and the rest, by commercial publishers, industrial firms, libraries, information centres, government agencies, research foundations, learned societies, etc. Those which publish many titles are small in number and those publish one or two titles are large in number. The former is largely made up of institutions of higher education and research institutes. (4) The abstracting journals published in Korea are classified by type into those of dissertations, research papers, journal articles, patent specifications in that descending order. The fact that Master; and doctoral dissertation abstracts ate dominating in Korea is due to the irrational practice of publishing those abstracts at many different institutions. (5) Most of the abstracting journals existing in Korea are published by national or government-supported research institutes in order to publicise their own research outputs. Their coverage of literature is normally narrow, and naturally their value to users is limited. (6) Korean is the desirable language for the abstracting journals intended to be distributed within Korea. About half of the abstracting jornals published in Korea is printed in Korean and the other half, in foreign languages, and in Korean and in foreign languages together. All the abstracting journals in foreign languages are printed in English except one, which is printed in Japanese. (7) Some twenty per cent of the abstracting journals in Korea is published monthly, bimonthly, and quarterly. The others are published annually, biannually and irregularly. The latter may not function properly as a current-awareness tool due to long intervals between their issues. It is particularly undesirable that about half of the abstracting journals in Korea is published irregularly. Most of the abstracting journals published in Korea are distributed freely to individuals and institutions selected by the publishers. (8) The abstracting journals published by the use of computers increased drastically in the past ten years. The abstracting j