Quantitative Literacy on the Web of Science, 1: The Bibliography and its Role in the History of this Journal

Prior to deciding to propose in 2006 that the National Numeracy Network (NNN) publish a new journal for quantitative literacy with their support, the University of South Florida Libraries investigated the publication environment of the field on the Web of Science®. Reproducing part of that study in this paper, we present findings from topic searches (March 2008) for “numeracy,” “quantitative literacy,” and “statistical literacy.” These updated results include a combined bibliography of 338 peer-reviewed articles amongst 210 different journals, by 748 authors from 321 institutions in 25 countries, in a total of 87 subjects (34% of the subject classes in Web of Science). Publication dates indicate exponential growth since 1974, with a doubling time of 4.8 years. Citation patterns argue that the field would benefit from the development of a hub journal. With the exception of citation-connected papers in medicine, health science and public health (21% of the collection), the papers of the bibliography are either completely isolated (54%) on a citation graph or in relatively small, weakly connected clusters. Very few are cited in prominent edited volumes associated with the NNN. In keeping with the concept that this journal will become a hub journal for the field as envisioned by the proposal from the USF Libraries, this paper presents the bibliography as well as a link and guide to an online version of the Histcite® citation graph where readers can browse the abstracts