10_chapter 1.pdf - shodhganga
TRANSCRIPT
1.INTRODUCTION
Bibliometrics is a set of techniques devoted to the quantitative analysis of
scientific and technical activities. These techniques implement statistical and
mathematical tools to measure the data that measure researcher’s contributions to
science and technical development.1 The data used for bibliometric studies mainly
stem from information produced by the activity of researcher’s communication.
These quantitative studies of researcher’s communication activities tend to have a
better understanding of phenomena of construction, dissemination and use of
scientific and technical knowledge. Bibliometrics is considered as a standard tool
of science policy and research management in the last decades. All significant
compilations of science indicators heavily rely on publication and citation
statistics and other, more sophisticated bibliometric techniques. The aim of
bibliometric studies was to measure national research performance in the
international context or to describe the development of a science field with the
help of bibliometric means. 2 Today, bibliometrics is one of the rare truly
interdisciplinary research fields extended to almost all scientific fields.
Bibliometric methodology comprises components from mathematics, social
sciences, natural sciences, engineering and even life sciences. Both bibliometrics
and scientometrics are a set of methods used for measuring the production and
dissemination of scientific knowledge. Derek de Solla Price and Vasilij Vasilevich
Nalimov were the originators of the discipline, which they developed for the
2
purpose of providing research tools to historians and sociologists of science. The
present study focuses attention on the scientometric analysis of the pattern of
publication, authorship and citation analysis by Engineering scientists contributed
in the journal IEEE Transactions on Control systems Technology.
1.1 Bibliometrics
Allan Pritchard was the first man who coined the term Bibliometrics in
1968 but it became more popular during 1980s.
According to D.T. Howkins "quantitative analysis of the bibliographical
features of body of literature". 3
Nicholas and Ritchie (1978), in their book entitled “Literature on
Bibliometrics”, stated that bibliometrics “Provide information about the structure
of Knowledge and how it is communicated?”4
More recently Sengupta had defined this term as the "organization,
classification and quantitative evolution of publication patterns of all macro and
micro communications along their authorship by mathematical and statistical
calculus". 5
1.1.1 Historical Remarks
1.1.1.1 Origin of Bibliometrics
The word ‘Bibliometrics’ is coined by two words ‘biblio’ and ‘metrics’.
The word ‘biblio’ is derived from combination of a Latin and Greek word
3
‘biblion’, which means book, paper. On the other hand, the word ‘metrics’
indicates the science of meter i.e. measurement.
The terms bibliometrics and scientometrics were almost simultaneously
introduced by Pritchard and by Nalimov and Mulchenko in 1969. While Pritchard
explained the term bibliometrics as “the application of mathematical and
statistical methods to books and other media of communication”. 6
Nalimov and
Mulchenko defined scientometrics as “the application of those quantitative
methods which are dealing with the analysis of science viewed as an information
process”. 7 According to these interpretations the speciality scientometrics is
restricted to the measurement of science communication, whereas bibliometrics is
designed to deal with more general information processes. The anyhow fuzzy
borderlines between the two specialties almost vanished during the last three
decades, and nowadays both terms are used almost as synonyms.
1.1.1.2 The Pioneers of Bibliometrics
The statistical analysis of scientific literature began almost 50 years before
the term “bibliometrics” was coined. In 1926, Alfred J. Lotka published his
pioneering study on the frequency distribution of scientific productivity
determined from a decennial index (1907- 1916) of Chemical Abstracts.
Lotka's Law describes the frequency of publication by authors in a given
field. It states that " . . . the number (of authors) making n contributions is about
1/n² of those making one; and the proportion of all contributors, that make a single
4
contribution, is about 60 percent" (Lotka 1926, cited in Potter 1988). This means
that out of all the authors in a given field, 60 percent will have just one
publication, and 15 percent will have two publications (1/2² times .60). 7 percent
of authors will have three publications (1/3² times .60), and so on. According to
Lotka's Law of scientific productivity, only six percent of the authors in a field
will produce more than 10 articles. Lotka's Law, when applied to large bodies of
literature over a fairly long period of time, could be accurate in general, but not
statistically exact. It is often used to estimate the frequency with which authors
will appear in an online catalog (Potter 1988).
At almost the same time, in 1927, Gross and Gross published their citation-
based study in order to aid the decision which chemistry periodicals should best
purchased by small college libraries. In particular, they examined 3633 citations
from the 1926 volume of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. This
study is considered the first citation analysis, although it is not a citation analysis
in the sense of present-day bibliometrics. Eight years after Lotka’s article
appeared, Bradford (1934) published his study on the frequency distribution of
papers over journals. Bradford’s Law serves as a general guideline to librarians in
determining the number of core journals in any given field. It states that journals
in a single field could be divided into three parts, each containing the same
number of articles: a core of journals on the subject, relatively few in number, that
produces approximately one-third of all the articles, a second zone, containing the
5
same number of articles as the first, but a greater number of journals, and a third
zone, containing the same number of articles as the second, but a still greater
number of journals.
The mathematical relationship of the number of journals in the core to the
first zone is a constant n and to the second zone the relationship is n². Bradford
expressed this relationship as 1:n: n². Bradford formulated his law after studying a
bibliography of geophysics, covering 326 journals in the field. He discovered that
9 journals contained 429 articles, 59 contained 499 articles, and 258 contained 404
articles. So it took 9 journals to contribute one-third of the articles, 5 times 9, or
45, to produce the next third, and 5 times 5 times 9, or 225, to produce the last
third. As may be seen, Bradford's Law is not statistically accurate, strictly
speaking. But it is still commonly used as a general rule of thumb (Potter 1988)
Zipf (1949) formulated an interesting law in bibliometrics and quantitative
linguistics that he derived from the study of word frequency in a text.
Zipf's Law is often used to predict the frequency of words within a text.
The Law states that in a relatively lengthy text, if you "list the words occurring
within that text in order of decreasing frequency, the rank of a word on that list
multiplied by its frequency will equal a constant. The equation for this relationship
is: r x f = k where r is the rank of the word, f is the frequency, and k is the constant
(Potter 1988). Zipf’s illustrated his law with an analysis of James Joyce's Ulysses.
"He showed that the tenth most frequent word occurred 2,653 times, the hundredth
6
most frequent word occurred 265 times, the two hundredth word occurred 133
times, and so on. Zipf’s found, then that the rank of the word multiplied by the
frequency of the word equals a constant that is approximately 26,500" (Potter
1988). Zipf's Law, again, is not statistically perfect, but it is very useful for
indexers. This situation dramatically changed when Derek deSolla Price published
his fundamental work in bibliometrics.
1.1.1.3 Bibliometrics since deSolla Price
In his book entitled “Little Science – Big Science” (1963), Derek deSolla
Price analysed the recent system of science communication and thus presented the
first systematic approach to the structure of modern science applied to the science
as a whole.8
At the same time, he laid the foundation of modern research evaluation
techniques. DeSolla Price’ work was more than pioneering; it was revolutionary.
Time was now ripe for the reception of his ideas since globalisation of science
communication, the growth of knowledge and published results, increasing
specialisation as well as growing importance of interdisciplinarity in scientific
research reached a stage where scientific information retrieval began to fail and
funding systems based on personal knowledge and evaluations by peer reviews
became more and more difficult. At that time, most basic models for scientific
communication were developed. Among these are first models for essential
concepts in scientific communication like growth and ageing of information.
7
Literature and information was assumed to grow exponentially, but in individual
research disciplines the growth can also be linear or logistic. Finally, the logistic
model has been widely accepted since both exponential and linear growth can be
considered special phases within the logistic model. The concept of ageing or
obsolescence is intimately linked with the growth of science. In information
science and bibliometrics, changing frequency of citations given or received over
time is assumed to reflect ageing of scientific literature. Some authors have
downright considered growth and obsolescence inverse functions, the faster
growth of literature in a field, the faster it ages and the literature becomes obsolete
in a shorter time. Consequently, an exponential model has been proposed for the
ageing of literature in the beginning, too. In particular, the model of radioactive
decay has been adopted. Later on, more complex models have been developed.
Goffman and Nevill have introduced the theory of intellectual epidemics as a
model of scientific communication in 1964. According to this model the diffusion
of ideas in a population of scientists could be compared to the spreading of an
influenza virus in a population of people, causing an epidemic. This model can be
used both, to describe the spread of the disease and to predict the time when the
disease reaches its peak, after which it is presumed to decline. The advantage of
the model lies in its predictive power. Goffman and Nevill proposed that the same
model could also describe the spread of information within the scientific
community. According to the model, the population can at any time be subdivided
8
into three groups of infected, resistant and infection sensitive persons. If a
published article in a specific topic is considered an infection, it is possible to
follow the diffusion of the epidemic by counting the number of publications per
author and theoretically make a forecast of its future. Communication between
authors builds on attempts to distribute ideas aiming at reception of disseminated
information and on providing contact between infection susceptible and already
infected persons. In the beginning of the eighties, bibliometrics could evolve into a
distinct scientific discipline with a specific research profile, several subfields and
the corresponding scientific communication structures (publication of the
international journal scientometrics in 1979 as the first periodical specialised on
bibliometric topics, international conferences since 1983, the journal research
evaluation since 1991). 9
The main reason for this development could be seen in the availability of
large bibliographic databases in machine-readable form and the fast development
of computer science and technology. This made it possible that metrics of science
could be established also outside the USA. First, license fees and expensive CPU
time resulted at least in the 80s in severe limitations but the technology of the 90s
brought the breakthrough. “On-line bibliometrics”, however, remained a dream.
The funding of large projects seems to have become the regular way of financing
research in scientometrics. From “Little Scientometrics” the field has become “Big
Scientometrics”. 10
9
1.1.2 Analogous Terms
Bibliometrics is just one of many sciences whose name ends with
“metrics”. Many scientists used the term under different names, but the concepts
were more or less supplementary and complementary to each other with some
broader and narrower extension of human ideas. One name that was used quite
early but very scarcely was statistical analysis of the literature by Cole and Eales
in 1917, while Hulme used the term ‘statistical Bibliography’ in 1923.
In 1948, the great Indian Library Scientist, S.R.Ranganathan, coined the
term “Librametry”, which historically appeared first and perhaps seemed proper to
streamline the services of Librarianship. The term ‘Bibliometrics’ is just
analogous to Ranganathan’s ‘Librametrics’, the Russian concept of
‘Scientometrics’, ‘Informetrics’ and to some other well established sub disciplines
like‘Econometrics’,‘Psychometrics’,‘Scientometrics’,‘Bibliometrics’,‘Technometr
ics’,‘Chemometrics’, where mathematical and statistical calculus have been
systematically applied to study and solve problems in their respective fields. Now
a day, the term ‘Scientometrics’ is used for the application of quantitative methods
to the history of sciences and obviously overlaps with bibliometrics to a
considerable extent.
10
1.1.3 Components of Bibliometrics
The present-day bibliometric research is aimed at the following three main
target-groups that clearly determine topics and sub-areas of “contemporary
bibliometrics”. 10
(i) Bibliometrics for bibliometricians (Methodology)
This is the domain of basic bibliometric research and is traditionally funded
by the usual grants. Methodological research is conducted mainly in this domain.
(ii) Bibliometrics for scientific disciplines (Scientific information)
The researchers in scientific disciplines form the bigger, but also the most
diverse interest group in bibliometrics. Due to their primary scientific orientation,
their interests are strongly related to their specialty. This domain may be
considered an extension of science information by metric means. Here we also
find joint borderland with quantitative research in information retrieval.
(iii) Bibliometrics for science policy and management (science policy)
At present this is the domain of research evaluation and the most important
topic in the field. Here the national, regional, and institutional structures of science
and their comparative presentation are in the foreground.
1.1.4 Applications of Bibliometrics
Bibliometrics as a technique has extensive applications in identifying the
research trends in a subject, trends in a authorship and collaboration in research,
core periodicals, obsolescence and dispersion of scientific literature useful in
11
estimating the comprehensiveness of secondary periodicals, studying publications
by scientists, citation studies and so on. Further, bibliometrics could be used in the
identification of emerging research areas.
The popularly in the adoption of bibliometric techniques in various
disciplines stimulated stupendous growth of literature on bibliometrics and its
related areas. The techniques are now being vigorously pursued and with the
result, it has been found that one fourth of all the articles published in a Library
and Information Science periodicals also carry a large number of articles on
bibliometrics. These techniques are being used for a variety of purpose like
determination of various scientific indicators, evaluation of scientific output,
selection of journals for libraries and even forecasting potential Nobel Laureates.
In the recent years, there has been an explosive growth in human
knowledge. In fact, the nature and tempo of growth has been such as too far
outstrip the achievements of the past centuries. As science itself growth in
extension and intention, the number of scientists increases. So obviously does the
volume of literature generated by the scientific community. In fact the growth of
literature has caused a fairly widespread alarm and the term that describes
explosion is also known as information explosion.
It could be noted that globally about 5 million articles are being published
annually in about one-lakh journals. The 5th
edition of the world list of scientific
periodicals shows a two hundred percent increase in the number of scientific
12
periodicals since 1970. De solla price claimed, that the science literature has
grown exponentially in the last three centuries with a doubling rate of
approximately 15 years.
The major focus of the study is to apply the bibliometric analysis with a
view to analyse the performance of research publication of scientists in the journal
“IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology”. It aims at examining the
emergence of research areas, research groups in engineering with a view to map
the cognitive or intellectual structure of research.
1.1.5 Some of the areas of bibliometric techniques are:
a. To quantify research and their growth
b. To identify comprehensiveness of secondary periodicals.
c. To identify uses and authors of secondary periodicals
d. To quantify the usefulness of adhoc and retrospective SDI services.
e. To identify the core journals in different disciplines to formulate a need
based acquisition policy.
f. To initiate effective multi-level network system.
g. To regulate inflow of information and their communication.
h. To develop norms for standardization.
i. To predict productivity of Publishers, individuals author organization,
country or that of an entire discipline.
13
1.2 Scientometrics
Scientometrics is a branch of the science ‘Science of Science’. Haitun treats
‘Scientometrics’, as scientific disciplines, which performs reproducible
measurements of scientific activity and reveal its objective quantitative
regularities.11
According to him, Scientometric methods include statistical and
thesaurus methods, and indicators as to the number of citations, term etc.
There are two aspects within science of science, viz.,
1. The analytical aspect which deals with the general laws of the development
of science as a knowledge system and a specific social institution; and
2. The normative aspect that deals with the development of practical
recommendations for raising research efficiency.
Scientometrics are used to measure scientific activities, mainly by producing
statistics on scientific publications indexed in databases. They are flexible tools
used to study the sociological phenomena associated with scientific communities,
to conduct scientific/strategic, technical, technological or competitive monitoring,
to design and manage research programs and to evaluate research. They are
extremely valuable methods for evaluating research output, positioning studies and
conducting foresight studies in science and technology. Scientometric tools could
be used to measure and compare the scientific activities at various levels of
aggregation including institutions, sectors, provinces and countries. They could
also be used to measure research collaborations, to map scientific networks and to
14
monitor the evolution of scientific fields. Scientometric indicators give policy-
makers objective, reproducible and therefore verifiable information that goes
beyond the anecdotal.
1.3 Informetrics
The field informetrics took the place of the originally broader specialty
bibliometrics. The term informetrics was adopted by VINITI (Gorkova, 1988) 12
and stands for a more general subfield of information science dealing with
mathematical statistical analysis of communication processes in science. In
contrast to the original definition of bibliometrics, informetrics also deals with
electronic media and thus includes topics such as the statistical analysis of the
(scientific) text and hypertext systems, library circulations, and information
measures in electronic libraries, models for Information Production Processes and
quantitative aspects of information retrieval as well.
Otto Nacke of West Germany first proposed the term ‘Informetrics’
according to Brookes, in 1979. The term’s acceptance data since 1987 when, B.C.
Brooke suggested during the international conference of bibliometrics and
theoretical aspects of Information Retrieval in Diepenbeek, Belgium that the term
informetrics included in the name of the following conference, scheduled for
London, Canada in 1989. This meeting was thus named- International Conference
on Bibliometrics, Scientometrics and Informatrics. The name of the third meeting
15
in the series held in Bangalore, 1991 in India, signals the final acceptance of this
term.13
“Informetrics is the study of the quantitative aspects of information in any
form, not just records (or) bibliographies and in any special group not just
scientists. Thus it looks at the quantitative aspects of informal (or) spoken
Communication as well as recorded and of information needs and uses of the
disadvantaged not just the intellectual elite.’’
Informetrics deals with the measurement, hence also the mathematical
theory and modeling of all aspects of information and the storage and retrieval of
information. It is mathematical meta information, i.e. a theory of information,
scientifically developed with the aid of mathematical tools.
It is clear from the definition of these terms that they are all synonymous
and even used interchangeably.
1.4 Citations Analysis
Martyn has defined citation analysis as “the analysis of citations or
references or both which form part of the scholarly apparatus of primary
communications. The techniques used for putting items of references in some kind
of rank or order, whether they are journals or author cited”.
A citation is a reference to a document given by a more recently published
document. The document citing is the citing document, and the document that
receives the citation is the cited document. 14
Citation analysis involves counting
16
the number of citations to a particular document for a period of time after its
publication (this is sometimes called direct citations). 15
The traditional
understanding of the citation function is that the frequency with which a document
is cited can be taken as a measure of the impact or influence of that document on
the citing literature. 16
Citation analysis leads to more sophisticated methods, such
as co-citation analysis, mapping of the literature, bibliographic coupling, 17
and co-
word analysis. These methods, individually and in combination, strides to find
information patterns, by analyzing reference and citation patterns as well as word
use frequencies, combined with statistical analysis.
According to Aina, citation analysis is a research method in which
references cited are statistically analyzed to find what journals are cited by
researchers in a particular discipline.
When one author cites another author, a relationship is established. Citation
analysis uses citations in scholarly works to establish links. Many different links
can be ascertained, such as links between authors, between scholarly works,
between journals, between fields, or even between countries. Citations both from
and to a certain document may be studied. One very common use of citation
analysis is to determine the impact of a single author on a given field by counting
the number of times the author has been cited by others. (Osareh 1996). 18
Citations are used in scholarly works to give credit to or acknowledge the
influence of previous works, or to refer to authorities. Citations permit readers to
17
put claims to the test by consulting earlier works. Authors often engage earlier
work directly, explaining why they agree with, or differ from, earlier views.
Ideally, sources are primary (first-hand) and recent.
In the second phase of this study citation appended to 935 articles (source
paper) have been taken and analyzed separately. The 935 articles have cited a total
of 20579 citations. The Number of citations available in a paper depends upon
several factors like the nature of a field, the size of its and the citation
characteristics of both the discipline and the length of the research papers and so
on.
1.4.1 History of Citation Analysis
Although citation Analysis was first used in 1848 or 1927, depending on
the sources, historically, it is a by- product of citation indexes. Gross and Gross in
1927 used citation count to rank the periodicals in chemistry which was regarded
as the first user study of any significance based on a more systematic citation
count that later became that basis and a methodological direction to the Bradford’s
Law of Scattering. The Institute of International Scientific Information (ISI)
produces these indexes that originate in the 1960s. The subject Coverage of
citation Indexes has been expanded from the initial Science Citation Index (SCI)
to include the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities
Citation Index (A&HCI).
18
Citation coupling techniques are used in the evaluation of scientific
activities for a few decades. The main objectives of the citation analysis are to
evaluate and to interpret citation received by articles, authors, institutions and
other aggregates of scientific activities. It is also used as a tool for measuring
communication links in the sociology of science.
1.4.2 Kinds of Citation Analysis
The most used bibliometric methods are Co-citation analysis, Bibliographic
coupling and Coword analysis.
Co-citation Coupling
Bibliographic Coupling
Coword Analysis
Co-citation Coupling:
Citations are often used in bibliometric analysis, and they are also the base
for Co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling. In Co-citation analysis the
data compiled are counts of the number of times two documents are jointly cited in
later publications. The fact of having been cited together in the same new paper
establishes a quantifiable link between the earlier papers, the strength of the link
depending upon the number of times that pair of documents is cited together. Co-
citation analysis can also be based on authors or journals as units of analysis.
Journals can thus be used for studying the organization of a subject literature
through Co-citation analysis. Co-citation of the published articles link the journals
19
in which they were published and the journal title then represents the subjects of
all articles included. 19
Bibliographic Coupling:
In bibliographic coupling the hypothesis is that two articles which both cite
the same previously published article, have something in common. Analysis of the
bibliographic coupling results in clusters of citing documents, when the Co-
citation analysis groups cited documents. In bibliometric terminology the citing
articles create a research front, when a cluster of cited documents is called an
intellectual base. 20
Coword analysis:
Coword analysis is based upon the analysis of the co-occurrence of the
keywords used to index articles and other documents. This method emphasis’s the
existence and evolution of networks of problems (so called problematic networks)
(Courtial, 1984). The method is useful for mapping the content of research in a
field.21
1.4.3 Importance of Citation Analysis
The importance of citation analysis includes the following:
a. Giving credit to related work.
b. Homage to pioneers
c. Identifying methodology, equipment, etc.
d. Correcting one's own work
20
e. Correcting the work of others
f. Providing broad background to the topic.
g. Criticizing the previous paper.
h. Alerting to forthcoming work
i. Quoting earlier papers that offer collaborations for one’s ideas or claims.
j. Drawing attention to previous work that is not well known, but ought to
be.
k. Identifying an earlier publication from which the author obtained the
original idea for his or her work.
l. Identifying original publications in which an idea or concept was
discussed
m. Citing a major figure because it makes the research work more
respectable.
n. Citing articles that fit the author’s perceptions of the journal’s readers and
what they are expecting. In other words, to fit the characteristic and status
of the journal that the author is submitting the paper to.
1.4.4 Application of Citation Analysis
Bibliometrics is the recently developed field. Field in the sense that many
of the applications made in the last two decades citation counting relating to the
form of the document, country, language, age distribution of document are helpful
to determine the scope of document. Their data are further helpful to identify the
21
strength and weakness of the collection. The ranked list of journals derived from
the citation counts are used for the selection and reflection of individual items.
Statistical analysis of citation studies is a better measurement compared to
the bibliometric description. citation studies can be much more wide based than
the library records and hence findings of certain studies can be said to be valid
within a broader context. Time, money and expertise needed to conduct certain
studies are on the lower side compared to any of the direct methods.
Martyn & Gilchrist used to rank British Scientific Journals. Lawani 22
has
prepared a ranked list of 681 journals according to their productivity and this has
been used as a guide for the acquisition of titles on Tropical and Subtropical
agriculture by a number of libraries. Garfield 23
has reported an analysis of more
than 5 million citations in the references of the journal articles covered by Science
Citation Index during 1974 and he has presented a ranked list of highly cited
journals by the total citation received, by ‘Impact Factor’ and by ‘Immediacy
Factor’. Wade has successfully applied this method for evaluating the University
and government officials administering scientific research programmes. Mirsky
has provided a brief overview of science studies in the Soviet Union. Lal 24
and
Ray have used the bibliometric techniques to measure the relative scientific
activity of the nations of the world in the field of horticulture. Sengupta has
presented a list of areas where these techniques are profitably used.
22
1.4.5 Usefulness of Citation Analysis
Citation analysis is used to study the citation links between scientific
papers, technical notes and reviews; for example it may be used by
the periodicals librarian for study of the structure of literature and to
identify core journals.
Citation analysis provides relevant measures of utility and
relationships of journals where primary function is to communicate
research results.
Citation analysis helps in identification of key documents and
creation of core lists of journals.
It helps in clustering of documents according to common references
and citations; and
Provides study of the attributes of literature including growth rate,
obsolescence, and citation practices.
1.4.6 Limitations of Citation Studies
A number of factors combine to limit the various values and applications of
the information system.
a. They provide only an incomplete and biased record of the working of the
information system.
b. Data have largely to be collected by hand although citation indexes
published by the institute for scientific can sometimes are used.
23
c. Insufficient research has been conducted into the rational behind citing to
enable direct (and confident) application of the data.
A Citation study by definition excludes all those publications that neither
cites nor is cited, so as citing trends to be the province of particular subjects and
publications, certain specific areas are discriminated against.
Science Citation Index (SCI) is multidisciplinary index to the world
Literature. Annually it processes lakhs of articles and million of references. Each
source article and its link with the cited article are mapped by this context. This
type of analysis reflects a wider notation of the present study.
1.4.7 Citation Biases
Incomplete citing occurs due to
A lack of understanding (papers exceeding the knowledge of an author do
not influence his work and are not cited): this may be the reason that often not
the discoverer or originator is cited but a later author; often a receiver however
only redescribed or mentioned the finding in a more understandable way.
A language barrier (often Non- English articles are rarely cited by native
English Speakers; or even if they are the editors of English language journals
struggling with space usually eliminate them; of also the language barrier
between Anglo- American and French Scientists).
A Suppression or neglecting of known relevant articles of competing
authors (among them also there is competition for grants), or of authors
24
belonging to a suspicious watched group, especially those who did not cite the
own papers, or of authors who are prejudiced against the own position.
Secret research for political or economic reasons, e.g. if research results are
kept back before a patent is issued.
A lack of finding relevant articles (the author did not have or did not use
proper possibilities of information or he did have, but the neglected article
which was published in an unknown journals is not indexed by widespread
bibliographies or databases).
1.5 Statement of Problem
The present study aims at analyzing the research publications of
scientists in ‘IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology’. In
academic and scientific work, publication is the chief means of communicating
research, a primary means of recognition and reward and hence a central social
process in the institutions. Therefore, it is through publication the scientists
receive professional recognition, esteem as well as promotion, advancement
and funding for future research. Publication is so central to productivity in
research that the work becomes ‘a work’ only when it takes a conventional,
physical (that is published) form, which can be received, assessed and
acknowledged by the scientific community. Hence Publication is a social norm
in a public sense and serves as a tool for the betterment of the individuals after
25
publication only. It can be called a research and could be fixed or judged and
acknowledged by the scientists in the society.
It could be seen clearly from the above discussion that Scientometric
analysis is an important tool for analyzing any discipline. By keeping this view
in mind, the researcher intends to undertake the study on research publications
by the Scientists in ‘IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology’: A
Scientometric Analysis. This study attempts to analyse the publications by the
Engineering scientists in ‘IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology’
in terms of growth rate, areas of research concentration, author productivity
and authorship pattern.
26
REFERENCES
1. Herre Roasting, Nicolas Barts and Valerie. “Bibliometrics: representation
Instrument of the multidisciplinary positioning of a scientific area.
Implementation for an Advisory Scientific Committee.”Proc.8th
Int.conf.of
the ISKO Spanish Chapter, University of Leon, Spain.2007.
2. Braun, T., Bujdoso, E., Schubert, A. Literature of analytical chemistry: A
Scientometric evaluation, CRC Press, Inc., Boca Raton, Florida, 1987.
3. Howkins, D .T. “Unvocational Used of online Information Retrieval
Systems: Online Bibliometric Study.” Journal of American Society for
Information Science 28.1(1981): 13-18.
4. Nicholas, D. and Ritchie, M. Literature and Bibliometrics. Clive Bingley,
London. 1978.
5. Sengupta, I.N. “ Bibliometrics and Identification of Core Periodicals.”
Herald of Library Science 29.3-4 (1990): 226-245.
6. Pritchard, Alan. “Statistical Bibliography or Bibliometrics.” Journal of
Documentation 25 (1988): 179-191.
7. Nalimov, V.V and Mulchenko, Z.M. “Study of science development as an
information Process.” Scientometrics 15 (1989): 33-43.
8. Price, D. de Solla. Little Science, Big Science. Columbia Univ. Press, New
York.1963.
27
9. Goffman,W and Nevill,V.A. “Generalization of epidemic theory.” Nature
204 (1964): 225.
10. Glanzel, W. A Bibliometric as a Research Field: A Course on theory and
application of bibliometric indicators, Course handouts. 2003.
11. Haitun, .D. “ Scientometrics: State and Perspectives.” Science 8 (1983): 48-
54.
12. Gorkova, V.I. Informetrics, Informatics, 10, VINITI, Moscow, 1988.
13. Jean, Tague-Sutcliffe. “ An Introduction to Informetrics.” Information
Processing and Management 28 (1992): 1-3.
14. King, J. “A review of bibliometric and other science indicators and their
role in research evaluation.” Journal of Information Science 13.5 (1987):
261-76.
15. Smith, L.C. “Citation Analysis.” Library Trends 30.1 (1981): 83-106.
16. Garfield, E. Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Application in Science,
Technology and Humanities, John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York.1979.
17. Kessler, M.M. “Bibliographic coupling between scientific papers.”
American Documentation 14. 1(1963): 10-25.
18. Osareh, Farideh. “Bibliometrics, Citation Analysis and Co-citation
Analysis: A Review of Literature II.” Libri 46 (1996): 217-225.
28
19. McCain, Katherine W. “Mapping economics through the journal literature:
An experiment in journal Co-citation analysis.” Journal of the American
Society for Information Science 42 .4(1991): 290-296.
20. Persson, Olle. “The intellectual base and research front of JASIS 1986-
1990.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science
45.1(1994): 31-38.
21. Courtial, J.P., Callon, M. “Is indexing thrustworthy? Classification of
articles through co-word analysis.” Journal of Information Science 9(1984):
47-56.
22. Lawani, S.M. “Periodical literature of tropical and subtropical Agriculture.”
Bulletin for libraries 26.2 (1972): 88-93.
23. Garfield. “ Significant Journals of Science.” Nature 264 (1976): 609-615.
24. Arjun Lal and Ray, P.K. “Pattern of Research Contribution in leading
Horticultural Journals of the world: A Comparative Study.” IASLIC
Bulletin 36.3 (1991): 95-102.