International Journal of Library and Information Studies ISSN: 2231-4911 Vol.2(4), Oct-Dec, 2012 BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE PLANT TAXONOMY JOURNAL NELUMBO, 2004-2011 Hemanta Kumar Das Botanical Survey of India, ERC, Shillong-793003, India Mobile:+91-9436312552 [email protected] ABSTRACT This study carried out a bibliometric analysis of 210 papers and 2999 citations published in the journal Nelumbo published by the of Botanical Survey of India for the period 2004 to 2011.Yearwise distribution of contributions in their different volumes, authorship pattern, degree of collaboration, length of papers, citation pattern, average citation per contribution per volume, type of documents and their citations, subject- wise distribution of papers, rank list of cited journals, ranking of contributors have been studied. Joint authorship pattern comes 74.76% which is higher than single authorship pattern. Out of 2999 citations maximum 52.59% are from journals. Number of papers on New Record comes in first place with 20%.The Journal of Hattori Botany Lab. Comes in top in journal rank study which is a foreign journal followed by two Indian journals i.e. Journal of Economic and Taxonomic Botany and the studied journal Nelumbo respectively. Keywords: Bibliometric analysis, study; Nelumbo; Bulletin of Botanical Survey of India. INTRODUCTION A bibliometric study for a journal is very essential to evaluate the journal and find out year- wise distribution of papers, authorship pattern, citation pattern, length of papers, institution- distribution of papers etc. In 1969 Prichard first coined the term bibliometrics. There are various bibliometric studies has been made in a single journal time to time. Single journals bibliometric studies helps to know the research trends of a particular field of research i.e. year wise distribution of contributions, authorship patter and the trends of research collaboration, subject wise distribution of contribution, rank of journals etc. Nelumbo is a peer reviewed journal in the field of plant taxonomy research. In the present study the attempt has been made to carry out a details study including ranking of cited journals for the 8 volumes of the journal and i.e. for the period of 2004-2011. LITERATURE REVIEW In a single journal different bibliometric studies has been made. Gupta 1(1977) analyzed the citations in Geliotekhnika :a Russian journal of solar energy engineering, Kundu 2 (1981) analyzed citations of Annals of Library Science and Documentation, Raina 3 (1984) studied the rank of cited journals of Annual Review of Biochemistry, Rao 4 (1984) studied citations of Research Quarterly to rank periodicals on physical education, Mote and Deshmukh 5 (1996) in their study on Annals of Library Science and Documentation found that journals are most cited form of communication amongst the library and information scientists and the source Page 51 International Journal of Library and Information Studies ISSN: 2231-4911 Vol.2(4), Oct-Dec, 2012 journal is the most cited publication. Dhiman 6 (2000) studied the ten year publications of the journal of Ethnobotany, Shokeen and Kaushik 7 (2004) in their study on Indian Journal of Plant Physiology found that journal articles are predominant with 81% of total citations. Biswas 8(2006) studied the bibliometric study of the Bulletin of Botanical survey of India for the period of 1994-2003 .Biswas 9 (2007) did the bibliometric study of the journal Economic Botany, Dixit and Katare 10(2007) studied the pattern of articles published in the Journal of Indian Society of Cotton Improvement for the period 1995-2000.,Narang 11 (2010) under took a bibliometric study of 4798 citations appended to 400 articles in five volumes (2003-2007) of the Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics and found that the most cited documents are articles from research journals and the foreign authors have contributed more than Indian authors. Swain 12 (2011) studied the journal Library Philosophy and Practice for its five year citations. Jena, Swain and Sahu 13 (2012)in their bibliometric study of The Electronic Library from 2003 to 2009 revealed some interesting bibliometric traits of the journal. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The Bulletin of Botanical survey of India has been changed its name to Nelumbo from 2009.The Bulletin of Botanical survey of India was first published in 1959 under the editorship of Fr.H. Santapau the then, Director of Botanical Survey of India. The journal already published its 53rd volume in 2011.The Journal use to published article concerning plant taxonomy and allied fields contribution from the scientists of the survey and other institutes. The present study has been made to have an in depth in the journal Nelumbo during the period 2004-2011. The objectives of the study are: 1. To study the year wise distribution of papers. 2. To study the authorship pattern and degree of collaboration. 3. To study the length of the papers 4. To study the citation pattern of the papers. 5. To study the bibliographical forms of documents 6. To study the subject wise distribution of the papers 7. To Study and prepare a rank list of journals used in plant taxonomy research in India. 8. To study the rank of contributors METHODOLOGY The papers of the journal Nelumbo from the volumes (2004-2011) were checked physically and the data relating to author, number of contributions, number of references and the number of pages, core journals, were scanned and tabulated using MS-Excel. Subject wise contributions were also counted and tabulated. From the collected data they were analyzed to find out result. SCOPE OF THE STUDY In the present study 210 papers and 2999 citation appeared in the journal Nelumbo during the period 2004 to 2011 have been analyzed. The Volume numbers 46 to 53 of the journal have Page 52 International Journal of Library and Information Studies ISSN: 2231-4911 Vol.2(4), Oct-Dec, 2012 been covered in this study. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The Total number of 210 papers, which comprises of research and review papers and short communications, were studied. The bulletin also used to publish Book reviews which were excluded in the present study. Year wise distribution of publications Table 1 shows that The Journal published maximum numbers of papers in the year 2008 i.e. 39 (18.58%) and minimum numbers of papers in the year 2006 and 2010 i.e. 15 (7.14%).All together 210 papers were published in between 2004 to 2011. Table 1: Year wise distribution of papers Year Vol. Total Number of papers Percentage 2004 46 38 18.10 2005 47 31 14.77 2006 48 15 7.14 2007 49 24 11.42 2008 50 39 18.58 2009 51 27 12.85 2010 52 15 7.14 2011 53 21 10.00 Total 8 Volumes 210 100.00 Figure 1 Year wise distribution of papers 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 No. of papers 10 5 0 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Year Number of Papers Percentage Authorship pattern of papers Table 2(A) shows that Out of 210 papers maximum number of article are contributed by two authors i.e.105 (50%) which is followed by single authors i.e.53(25.24%),three authors i.e. 37(17.62%) and more than three authors i.e. 15(7.14).It is observed that single and two authors contributed more papers. Page 53 International Journal of Library and Information Studies ISSN: 2231-4911 Vol.2(4), Oct-Dec, 2012 Table 2(A): Year wise authorship pattern Year Vol. Number of authors Total One Two Three >Three 2004 46 9 19 5 5 38 2005 47 5 18 4 4 31 2006 48 8 6 1 0 15 2007 49 7 11 5 1 24 2008 50 11 15 11 2 39 2009 51 5 16 4 2 27 2010 52 4 8 2 1 15 2011 53 4 12 5 0 21 Total Total 53 105 37 15 210 Percentage Percentage 25.24 50 17.62 7.14 100 It is also seen in the Table 2(B) that 53(25.24%) papers are contributed by single author and the rest 157(74.76%) are contributed by joint authors. It is found that joint authorship pattern is higher than single authorship pattern. Table 2(B): Single and Joint authorship pattern Authorship Year Total percentage 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Single 9 5 8 7 11 5 4 4 53 25.24 author Multiple 29 26 7 17 28 22 11 17 157 74.76 authors Total 38 31 15 24 39 27 15 21 210 100 Figure 2 Single author and multiple authors 53 157 Single Author Multiple Authors Degree of Collaboration To find out the degree of collaboration, the formula suggested by K. Subramanyam 14 (1983) has been used and the result shown in Table 2(C). The used formula is: C=Nm/Nm+Ns Where C=Degree of Colaboration of a discipline Nm=Number of multiple authored papers Ns=Number of Single authored papers Page 54 International Journal of Library and Information Studies ISSN: 2231-4911 Vol.2(4), Oct-Dec, 2012 Table 2(C): Degree of collaboration by Year Year Single author Multiple author Degree of (Ns) (Nm) collaboration C=Nm/Nm+Ns) 2004 9 29 0.76 2005 5 26 0.83 2006 8 7 0.47 2007 7 17 0.70 2008 11 28 0.71 2009 5 22 0.81 2010 4 11 0.74 2011 4 17 0.80 Total 53 157 0.75 Table 2(C) shows that Plant taxonomists generally prefer to conduct collaborative research work. It is found that the average degree of collaboration in plant taxonomy is 0.75 which is the high degree of collaborative research in plant taxonomy.