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The main expectation from academic outputs is to make an original contribution to the field of science. This contribution, which can be followed through citations, is one of the important indicators of the effectiveness of publications and academic journals in the field. This activity can be shaped by different dynamics for different research areas. Folklore is a field of humanities with a predominant national character because its field of study is subjects of a particular group of peoples. In this context, it is possible that different factors such as language and cultural proximity, apart from publication quality, have an impact on the evaluation of the field through citations. The main purpose of our study is to reveal the basic dynamics of scientific activity in the field of folklore through the journal Millî Folklor (MF) and other folklore journals. In this context, the scientific communication processes of the folklore discipline will be discussed with bibliometric methods in our study. In our study, the analyzes were carried out in two stages. Firstly, the position of MF and other folklore journals in the field is discussed with their publication numbers and citations. Secondly, the citation dynamics of the folklore field were examined through the publications citing to folklore journals. As a result, obtained from the bibliometrics analysis, it was seen that when MF is evaluated together with other folklore journals, it stands at a different point in terms of the number of citations and publications. In terms of citation averages, "Journal of Folklore Research" and "Journal of American Folklore" are prominent in the field. It has been determined that the citation lag value and the half-life value which indicates literature obsolescence differ considerably between journals. It was observed that 50% of the cited publications of the “Journal of American Folklore” started to be cited in the first year, while this value was 3 years for MF. In the list created according to literature obsolescence values, MF is the journal with the lowest half-life value among the journals evaluated. In the second part of the study, it was examined which disciplines citing to the field of folklore, it has been revealed that the fields of anthropology and history are prominent and the share of citations taken from outside of the folklore field. It has also been revealed that the share of citations to folklore publications from other research fields in total citations has increased over the years. Finally, diversity analyzes were carried out on the citations of folklore publications. In the diversity analyses carried out, it was examined in which sources the citations received by the journals were concentrated and whether this created a bias towards the citations received. These analyzes were carried out in the context of the scientific fields, countries, and journals of the publications citing to folklore publications. As a result of the diversity analysis, it is seen that in the citation tendencies of the folklore journals, language, culture and spatial proximity are the basis of the citation dynamics for the field. In the analysis made in the context of the languages of the journals in the field, it was seen that while Turkish, Spanish and German were in the periphery, the journals with the English language were in the central position and the publications in these English journals had a high tendency to get citations from different countries, scientific fields, and journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Journal of National Folklore (JNF) has been indexed by the Art& Humanities Citation Index since 2007. This study examines the Journal of National Folklore and bibliometric features of its articles. The research carried out covers 174 articles between the years 2007-2009. The following research questions have been addressed: 1) Is multiple authorship a prevalent feature of the articles?) 2) What are the institutional affiliations of the authors of the articles? 3) Which types of sources (journal articles, monographs, etc.) get cited most often in the articles? 4) What are the most frequently cited journals in the JNF 5) What is the rate of literature obsolescence in folklore?6) How is the status of JNF between the 18 journals indexed by A&HCI? The publications of JNF have also been indexed in Scopus, CSA Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, EBSCO Publishing, Genamics JournalSeek, IBSS International Bibliography of the Social Science, MLA Modern Language Association of America, TA Türkologischer Anzeiger. JNF is published in four issues (Spring, summer, autumn and winter)) per year. The journal was first published in 1989. The present research covers a total of 174 articles published between the years 2007-2009. To examine publications of the JNF, an online search in the A&HCI database has been performed on January 23, 2010, using the "publication name" field that is available. A total of 206 publications have been identified. Each record provided information about the author names, author addresses, publication titles, publication years, languages, document types, number of references included in the publication, and citations that the publication received as of January 23, 2010. In addition, reference lists of publications have been used th identify the cited sources. Editorials (n = 15), Bibliographca litems (n=10) and book reviews (n=7) have been excluded in this study. An average article was 8 pages long (SD=3, min.=1, maks.=24). Except for three articles, all of the articles published in the MF were in Turkish. The total number of individual authors contributing to the 174 articles was 169. Nebi Özdemir is the most prolific author with five articles. M. Öcal Oğuz, R. Aslıhan Aksoy Sheridan vs Gökhan Tunç were conduced with four articles. The total number of references included in the 174 articles was 2744. In this study, 174 citations that had no publication year information were left out of evaluation. After this elemination the total number of references dropped to 2570. Of all the citations in the 70.5% (n = 1814) were from books. Hence, the study has shown that books are very important sources for scholarly communication in folklore. The authors of JNF made a citation to journal 535 times. The most frequently cited journal was Journal of National Folklore with 81 citations. The JNF has been published in four issues in a year. Foreign researchers have not been interested in publishing articles in the JNF. Except of the three articles, all of the articles in that appeared in the JNF were in Turkish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]