UCLA

There are relatively few bibliometric or citation analysis historical studies of the scholarly literature of arts or humanities fields as compared with the science, technical, medical, or social science disciplines; many studies focus on the journal literature and use the formal works cited reference lists as captured by citation indexes as the basis for their conclusions. This study looks at aspects of the scholarship of the literary and media-based popular culture field of fantasy and science fiction (F&SF; aka: fantastic, fantastika) studies through the first 50 years of Extrapolation (December 1959-Fall 2009), the oldest continuing scholarly journal in the field, in three areas:

-- History and editorial purpose, types of contributions, and recognition by general-, literature-, and F&SF-focused indexing services;

-- Analyses of the 785 scholars published in the journal, by gender, co-authorship, affiliation and status (geographical, institutional, ranks, disciplines, awards), their referencing practices, and identification of the 55 most frequently published scholars; and,

-- Analyses of more than 15,000 references given to 2,035 primary (creative) authors and more than 8,000 individual creative works, including collaboratively authored media, religious, and other titles, by gender and national affiliation, and by types of works. publication sources, language, and ages/dates, as found in 937 articles by 656 different authors. The primary references analyzed come not only from the traditional bibliometric locations in Works Cited lists, but also from Notes, and the references found in the rarely if ever studied informal locations (implicit citations), primarily within the text of the articles. The most frequently referenced primary authors and works are identified: 118 authors (20-563 references), beginning with Ursula K. Le Guin (563 references; 105 different works), Robert A. Heinlein (519; 90), and H. G. Wells (328; 52); 182 primary (creative) works (10-191 references), starting with Star Trek: The Original Series (191 references), Star Trek: The Next Generation (106), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (77), Wells’ The Time Machine (73), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (71).

This study should interest historians of arts and humanities scholarship, F&SF scholars, and librarians and archivists responsible for collection development and collections management in the areas of literature and media.