University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal) Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln January 2021 Nobel Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee: A Scientometric Portrait, 1987-2019 Arijit Das Jadavpur University, [email protected] Udayan Bhattacharya Dr. Jadavpur University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Das, Arijit and Bhattacharya, Udayan Dr., "Nobel Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee: A Scientometric Portrait, 1987-2019" (2021). Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). 4806. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/4806 Nobel Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee: A Scientometric Portrait, 1987-2019 Arijit Dasa & Udayan Bhattacharyab aResearch Scholar, Dept. of Lib. and Inf. Sc., Jadavpur University, Kolkata700032 Email: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-5162-4492 bProfessor, Dept. of Lib. and Inf. Sc., Jadavpur University, Kolkata700032 Email: [email protected] Abstract: Nobel Memorial Prize in economics is selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and first awarded in the domain in 1969; the latest in 2019 was awarded to the Indian-born American economist Prof. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. The present study attempted to measure and analyse the research publications of Prof. Banerjee during 1987 to 2019 based on the data available in Google Scholar database. A total of 333 documents published during this period in which 35.74 percent were published as journal articles. Till 2004 the mean relative growth rate of his publications was 0.237 and doubling time was 3.29 whereas from 2005 to 2019 the relative growth rate decreased to 0.077 and the time for doubling increased to 10.20. Esther Duflo was the most prolific co- author of the publications of Prof. Banerjee with 120 documents shared out of 333 by them. The collaboration rate of all publications was 0.89 identifies most of his publications written in collaboration. The journal he used for most of his research to publish was mainly USA based. He has produced numbers of publications which received huge citations, and during May, 2020 the h-index counted 87 according to Goggle Scholar citation counts. Keywords: Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee; Nobel Laureate; Scientometrics; Relative Growth Rate; Doubling Time. 1. Introduction: The modern scientometrics largely based on the contribution of Derek J. de Solla Price and Eugene Garfield. Garfield created the Science Citation Index and established a dedicated academic journal for the field, named as ‘Scientometrics’ in 1978. While the other fields, like sociology were engaged to present the behavioural approaches of a scientist, scientometrics focused on the measurement of research outputs. The term ‘Scientometrics’ also deals with the scientific study of science and its outcomes. A Scientist or a Nobel laureate or an expert of any field largely knew for his contribution to the field of his expertise or contribution to the society. This contribution could be made by producing scientific publications. The technique of scientometric analysis includes both the quantitative and qualitative indicators. These indicators could be very useful to study of an individual’s research outcomes through which he has done so many impacts on the society. Prof. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019 along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. They introduced an experimental approach to ‘alleviating the global poverty’. Their work basically has done on the relatively low and lower-middle income based countries where they have done the experiment to understand the small and specific problems associated with the poverty and identified the best possible cures to those problems through the field experiments which has designed very carefully and applied over more than two decades. Their field work became standard later in the field of development economics. Not only has this contribution been made by Prof. Banerjee for the field, he has also produced several other research contributions to the field. By keeping in mind the contribution he has already in the mid-way of his professional career the present study has attempted to measure and analyse the research contribution through the indicators of scientometrics study. 2. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, A Brief Biography: Prof. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was born on 21st February 1961 at Mumbai, India. The Indian-born American economist was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer in 2019 "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."1 Prof. Banerjee completed his schooling from South Point High School at Calcutta and also completed his B.Sc. in economics at the University of Calcutta in 1981, M.A. from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1983 and awarded Ph.D. in 1988 from Harvard University, the title of his doctoral thesis was ‘Essays in Information Economics’. Both his parents was also served as Professors of economics, where his father at Presidency College was then an affiliated college to University of Calcutta now Presidency University, an autonomous university of West Bengal and mother at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In 2003, Prof. Banerjee appointed as a Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In this year he also established Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) with collaboration to Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan. He plays the role of one of the directors at J-PAL. Prof. Banerjee’s main field of interests was on the areas such as economic development, information theory, theory of income distribution, macroeconomics etc. Before 2003 he has served many universities, such as Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Paris School of Economics as associate, and assistant or visitor professor in economics. Apart from Nobel Prof. Banerjee has received several fellowships and honorary awards from different institutions around the world. He has associated and served several professional services and has published so many documents during his professional career and he will goes on by doing the same in future also. 3. Literature Review: There are many scientometric; bibliometric studies have been attempted on eminent persons, scientists of several fields and also on Nobel laureates to measure the research productivity of individual authors. Some of these studies are as follows to understand the main focusing areas of such studies - Garg, K. C. and Kumar, N. (2019) analysed research publications of Dr. Hari Chand Sharma who was a renowned agricultural scientist. A total of 595 research publications were identified during 1976 to 2016 and analysed with scientometric indicators like publication productivity, collaboration rate, collaboration coefficient, authorship pattern, channels of communication, citation analysis and so on. For identifying citation data the study based on Google Scholar database. His most number of papers was journal articles consisting 45.2% of total outputs and based on these journal articles only they found only 11 publications of single authored. The study also noted that the peak year of productivity was at the age of 58 by Dr. Sharma. Sinha, A. K. (2017) has attempted to present a scientometric profile of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen based on the books published by him during the period 1960 to 2015. During this period of time he produced 43 books and among them most of his books has been written with Jean Dreze collaboratively. The study also identified that during 2000 to 2009 most of his books were written. Social problems, politics, government and financial economics were the main areas of the books authored by Bharat Ratna Amartya Sen. Mukherjee, B. (2013) has studied 222 unique articles produced by Prof. Lalji Singh during 1987 to 2011. Web of Science and Scopus have been used as the source of bibliographic information and in both the databases the h-index of Prof. Singh was 30. Most of the articles of Prof. Singh appeared in foreign journals whereas only 18 in Indian journals. He produced 7-8 articles averagely in every year. Munnolli, S. S., Pujar, S. M. and Kademani, B. S. (2011) have measured the publication productivity of Nobel laureate Harald zur Hausen. The study found 285 research publications including 267 journal articles during 1964 to 2009 published by Harald zur Hausen. 1986 noted peak year of publications with 16 papers. International Journal of Cancer was the most preferred journal of Harald zur Hausen with 48 publications. 4. Objective of the study: To study the attributes of research publications of Nobel Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee with the tools and techniques of scientometric study, for instance some of these are publication productivity, growth of publications, authorship pattern, collaboration rates, channels of publication, citation analysis etc. 5. Methodology: The present study intends to measure the research publications published by Nobel Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee during 1987 to 2019. All types of documents published during this period of time has been identified from two sources mainly, one is the updated CV from MIT’s official website which has been uploaded in 20th of May 2020 and the second source was Google Scholar, accessed during