An analysis of document types published in journals related to physics: Proceeding papers recorded in the Science Citation Index database

The introduction of bibliometric indicators to compare the scientific performance of countries soon raised questions about what document types should be counted for comparison. The present study deals with the development of different document types published in journals related to Physics and recorded in the Science Citation Index. We first take a look at the evolution of the production and citation of papers by document type as well as at the specialization of countries in different document types. We then highlight some characteristics of the ISI document type category "Proceedings" followed by an analysis of publishers and average number of "Proceedings" pages.