The growing importance of R and D reports as shown by nuclear science reports

The authors propose a method for the identification of key organisations, i.e. those which are most active in producing research reports in a given field. Two-thirds of the reports come from just 9 percent of research institutions. The comparison of rank distributions of research reports and journal articles shows that the former fulfil the communicative function better than the latter. The study results confirm the opinion that R and D reports may be rightfully categorised as scientific literature, particularly when their refereeing, bibliographic control and dissemination are provided within the framework of international information systems like INIS. (author)