This study investigates the citation patterns of environmental scientists and biologists at the University of Massachusetts at Boston (UMB). The citation patterns of these academic scientists are compared to those in Journal Citations Reports (JCR).

The findings suggest that the UMB environmental scientists and biologists have similar citation patterns to those of other scientists. There are differences in the median age of the journal cited by these scientists when compared to JCR. Yet the age of the items cited suggests that the library can weed some pre-1960 journals with minimal effect on the effectiveness of the library to satisfy the needs of these scientists.

The journals cited by the UMB environmental scientists and biologists were broken down by subject category. The citation frequency of the journals cited by these UMB scientists was compared to that of JCR. Some difference was found between the citation patterns of the UMB environmental scientists and biologists with those of JCR by subject category. This suggests that JCR might be used at HL for collection development.

The study findings suggest journal subscriptions that are potential candidates for cancellation. A list of journals that are potential candidates for acquisition at the UMB Healey Library (HL) is identified. The findings of this study also suggest that HL's effectiveness in satisfying the citation needs of the UMB environmental scientists and biologists is lower than expected when compared to the findings of other studies. The findings suggest that HL must provide a multi-subject science journal collection to satisfy the need of these scientists within the constraints of available fiscal and physical resources.

The findings also suggest minimal library material fund allocations for the different publication forms cited by the UMB environmental scientists and biologists.

Finally, the citation patterns of the UMB environmental scientists suggest that these scientists conform to "normal science". Thus, the UMB environmental scientists and biologists rely on journals more than any other publication form; their journal citation scattering conforms to Bradford's Law of Scattering; and the citation frequency rankings of the journals cited by these scientists were statistically similar to those of JCR. Contrary to the belief of a few science historians, these environmental scientists conform to the prevailing "norms and rules" of science.