The field‐specific reference patterns of periodical and nonserial publications.

This study is concerned with differences in referencing patterns between book literature and periodical publications. Four indicators, the mean reference rate per page, the percentage of references to Web of Science journal literature, the mean reference age, and Price Index, were applied to analyze the reference patterns of three publication types: books, book chapter articles and journal articles. References of publications indexed in Web of Science Core Collection were analyzed for two periods (2005‐2009, 2010‐2013) and across 15 disciplines. Journal article authors cite more recent references and more references from serial publications than monograph authors. The difference between the sciences and the SSH is as obvious as the difference between periodical and non‐serial publications. However, the reference patterns of social sciences are much more similar to science fields than humanities, especially for monographs. The subject characteristics of reference pattern are strongly affected by publication types. Furthermore, journal publications have stronger associations between ageing indicators and the share of WoS journal references than monographs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]