Scientific journals are one of the most important sources of information for the scientific community. The purpose of this review was to provide beginners basic key papers for the studying of scientific journals worldwide, together with some brief comments on each. Each of five separate approaches to research on scientific journals, namely ecological studies, historical studies on scientific journals, their future prospects, their role in the scientific community, and their positions in libraries, are dealt with respectively. The author emphasizes that librarians and information specialists should take on interest in the characteristics and problems of scientific journals.

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The people who played the most active role in establishing the library system in Japan in the Meiji period were mainly government officials, educators, financiers and Buddhist priests, namely intellectuals or influential people in the provinces. Many of the libraries established were subscription libraries based on membership systems.
In 1885, members of Seii-kai established Tokyo Medical Library, the first medical library in Japan. Following this, in 1897, certain medical doctors established Nippon Medical Library in Tokyo. Other medical libraries soon appeared in Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima and other cities. All these medical libraries were well-stocked and were open, not only to members, but also to medical students and the general public.
In the Taisho period these libraries came to form the basis of medical college libraries and, having fulfilled an important role, ceased to exist.

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Doctoral dissertations are original results of studies presented to universities in fulfillment of doctoral degrees. They are thus papers of high quality. In America such dissertations are highly appreciated, whereas Japanese scholars and medical librarians have not yet recognized their value and utility. Nevertheless, doctoral candidates are under an obligation to publish their dissertations. Why are such academic materials not being paid attention to in Japan? In consideration of the above-mentioned fact, this paper reports on education in American dental universities, the American doctoral degree system in comparison with the Japanese one, and the methods of reference to dissertations. Furthermore, an analysis of American doctoral dissertations in dentistry belonging to the Nippon Dental University Library is presented together with research on the frequency of quotations from doctoral dissertations in major American dental journals, so as to determine the value of dissertations as a primary source.

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Bibliographic verification is greatly emphasized in the interlibrary loan works of the Japan Medical Library Association (JMLA). However, in actual fact, most member libraries manage to verify bibliographic data in spite of the recent opinion that bibliographic verification is unnecessary.
Analyzing the reasons for refusal to measure the effect of bibliographic verification, it is clear that half of them relate to the fact that the items requested are not held, and that bibliographic verification is not particularly helpful in avoiding refusals. Moreover, it appears that the provision of missing bibliographic data does not always contribute to the eradication of refusals. The author points out that holding, arrival and binding information also needs to be checked systematically, and that this information is necessary for any discussion of medical librarianship in terms of bibliographic verification.

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A study was carried out to determine whether the collection of books and periodicals is efficiently done, by analyzing the rate of utilization by hospital staff members such as physicians, surgeons, medical technologists, nurses, pharmacists and other personnel.
The total number of medical books and periodicals utilized by the hospital staff from 1978 to 1982 was 15, 530, of which 74% was material possessed by out library, and 26% was that of other medical libraries. This indicates a considerably efficient collection of books and periodicals for the requirement as a whole, but in 4 out of 21 medical branchs in our hospital the utilization rates for the periodicals possessed by other libraries were over 40%, indicating insufficient collection in these areas. On the other hand, 36 (15%) of the 244 periodicals possessed by this library were not utilized over the 5-year period studies.
These observations indicate that such a qualitative and quantitative analysis of circulation counting would be useful for refining the book and periodical collection in a library with a restricted budget.

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