Análise da literatura periódica brasileira na área de história

Abstract

Analysis of the periodical literature in Brazilian History produced between 1975-1976 and of the bibliographic material cited by especialists, aiming to detect behaviour patterns and compare them to other areas of knowledge. In the citing literature authors are characterized according to their productivity, academic beckground and professional affiliations. In relation to their literary productionthe original form of articles presentation and its subject tendencies as to geographic areas and historic periods are studied. In the cited literature bibliographic material is characterized according to its class (primary and secondary sources), physical form, countries of publication or location and titles frequency.Results show that: scientific community studied is mostly concentrated in Säo Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and has strong links with academic and research institutions; individual works are predominant; articles are signed not exclusively by historians with university degrees and authors productivity is low. The majority of works were never published before, regional studies focus mainly the South-Eastern area and the Imperial period (1822-1889) is the most analysed. In regard with the bibliographic material historians used primary documents above secondary and a great variety of types and titles of documents, leading to a strong dispersion of literature. Such documents were published or located in Brazil and othercountries with which there is or was a historical relation. Communication patterns were not identical to those of other field scientists. It was clearly observed that bibliographic references have a double function: first as the study material of the specialist and second as the subsidiary literature. Future citation analysis studies in History must take into account such peculiarity.