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We analyzed the International Seismological Center (ISC) catalogue of seismological
publications from 1980 to 1995 to investigate to what extent the information provided by an
earthquake has been utilized to obtain a better understanding of earthquakes and seismic
disaster. We select the ISC bulletin which has a wider coverage of seismological journals
and languages than the Scientific Citation Index (SCI), so that there is less regional or
language bias in the analysis. The earthquakes in the catalogue spans the period from 1975
to 1990. Papers which have direct relations with an earthquake as defined by the ISC
catalogue ranges from 1 to 102 in order of magnitudes. The logarithm of the maximum number of papers on an earthquake is shown to be proportional to the magnitude of the
earthquake, which provides a possibility to define a 'normalized impact factor' of an
earthquake, so that earthquakes with different magnitudes can be compared with each other.
The magnitude span of earthquakes with a certain 'impact factor' and the 'impact factor'
itself can be used in the regional comparisons. The analysis shows a regional difference that
the academic impact strength' of the earthquakes occurring in Asian developing countries
are not comparable to the societal effects of these earthquakes, implying that one of the
future directions of the development of Asian seismology is to have more observations and
more researches on the earthquakes occurred 'at home.