The purpose of the study was to analyse the way in which papers published by European
pharmaceutical journals are made available by the main French document supplier, “ Institut National de
l’Information Scientifique et Technique ” linked to the “ Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique ” (INISTCNRS).
After having given a definition and built up a sample of 289 journals, orders for them during 1996-1999
were analysed. Then, the possible relationships between orders to INIST-CNRS and the impact of journals on
the scientific community (from Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) data) were examined. Finally, a study
was made of relationships between document orders to INIST-CNRS and the indexation of European
pharmaceutical journals in bibliographic databases.