FITTING OF LOTKA S LAW WITH LIFE SCIENCES LITERATURE OF KERALA STATE, INDIA BASED ON SCOPUS AND WEB OF SCIENCE

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1 International Journal of Library & Information Science (IJLIS) Volume 5, Issue 3, Sep Dec 2016, pp , Article ID: IJLIS_05_03_006 Available online at Journal Impact Factor (2016): (Calculated by GISI) ISSN Print: and ISSN Online: IAEME Publication FITTING OF LOTKA S LAW WITH LIFE SCIENCES LITERATURE OF KERALA STATE, INDIA BASED ON SCOPUS AND WEB OF SCIENCE Ambily M P Research Scholar, Bharathiar University Technical Assistant Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit Kalady, Ernakulam , Kerala, India P. Sivaraman Associate Professor Library and Information Science Wing Annamalai University Annmalainagar, Tamilnadu, India ABSTRACT The paper presents the quantitative analysis of research performance of life science in Kerala state, India. A total of 9838 records for 30 years spanning between 1986 and 2015 were retrieved from SCOPUS and Web of Science. The study aims to ascertain the growth of literature, authorship pattern, sources of publications, subject concentration, etc. The emphasis has been laid on the testing of Lotka s law with the life science literature using LLS method. The result indicates that the Lotka s law is best fitting to the data of life sciences literature. Key words: Bibliometrics, Biology, Life Science, Life Science Literature, Kerala State, Lotka s Law Cite this Article: Ambily M P and P. Sivaraman, Fitting of Lotka s Law with Life Sciences Literature of Kerala State, India Based On Scopus and Web of Science. International Journal of Library & Information Science, 5(3), 2016, pp INTRODUCTION Researchers in several disciplines have been interested in publication productivity as a means of assessing scholarly ecellence of individual researchers within a field (Glänzel, 2003). Publication productivity, as measured by the number of papers, has also been regarded as one of the main indicators of reputation of institutions in general (Uzun, 1996) and academic institutions in particular (Johns, 1983). There is a growing awareness that the advantages of basing research, and subsequent political choices, on criteria that lend themselves for more quantitative evaluation (Okubo, 1997). In view of the above, it was intended that the bibliometrics being one of the interdisciplinary research fields concerned with measuring the output of 77 editor@iaeme.com

2 Ambily M P and P. Sivaraman almost all scientific fields (Godin, 2006) may be employed to assess the performance of the researchers in the field of life sciences. The study aims to ascertain the growth of literature, authorship pattern, sources of publication, subfield-wise research concentration, etc. The emphasis has been laid on the testing of Lotka s law with the life science literature using LLS method. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The study was undertaken with the following objectives: To study the growth trend of life science research in Kerala; To analyse the sources of publications in the field of life sciences; To analyse the authorship pattern among life science researchers in Kerala; To identify the research concentration of researchers in various subfields of life science in Kerala; and To test the fitness of Lotka s law with the data of life sciences literature retrieved from SCOPUS and Web of Science for Kerala state. DATA SOURCE AND METHODOLOGY The data were retrieved from SCOPUS and Web of Science. The retrieved data were filtered to avoid duplicate records. Thus, a total of 9838 records which include articles (8741), reviews (516), proceedings (183), meeting abstracts (153), letters (84), corrections (57), bibliographic items (53), and editorial material (51) were retrieved. MS Ecel Spreadsheet and MS Word were used to analyse the data. Lotka s law with the life science literature using LLS method was applied to ascertain the fitness of data. Lotka s Law Lotka s law is a classical method used to test the regularity in the publication activity of authors of scientific literature. It 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 contribution is in the region of 60 percent. This means that out of all the authors in a given field, 60 percent will have just one publication; 15 percent will have two publications (1/2² times 60); 7 percent will have three publications (1/3² times 60), and so on (Lotka, 1926). For the present study, Lotka s Inverse Power Law model that states the function describing the pattern of productivity of authors publishing in a specified subject field in a fied time period is mathematically given as: y n = C (1) Where is the number of publications of interest (1,2, etc.,); n is an eponent that is constant for a given set of data; y is the epected percentage of authors with frequency of publications; and C is a constant This means that productivity corresponds not to the number of articles published by an author but to its logarithm; it seems that a multiplicative, rather than simply additive, model provides a better fit to this measure or counting method. The eponent n is often fied at 2, in which case the law is known as the inverse square law of scientific productivity. However, given that the eponent n predicts the relative number of authors at each productivity level it would seem useful to calculate it. In the present study, least square method has been used. It can be epressed as: 78 editor@iaeme.com

3 Fitting of Lotka s Law with Life Sciences Literature of Kerala State, India Based On Scopus and Web of Science n N XY X 2 X ( X ) = 2 N Y Where N is the number of data pairs considered; X is the logarithm of (=number of articles); and Y is the logarithm of y (y=number of authors) The constant C is calculated using the following formula: (2) 1 C = n 1/ (3) In order to verify that the observed distribution of author productivity fits the estimated distribution, Pao (1985) suggests applying the non-parametric Kolmolgorov-Smirnov (K-S) goodness-of-fit test. To this end the maimum difference between the real and estimated accumulated frequencies is calculated, this value then being compared with the critical value (c.v.) obtained from the following equation: c. v. = ( y + ( /10) 1/ ) 1/ 2 y RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Annual research output Table 1 presents the results of year-wise analysis of total research output of life science literature produced by the researchers in Kerala state. It was observed that the output has grown steadily during the period of study from 34 in 1986 to 1016 in However, there was a sudden increase in the years 1999 and 2015 contributing 201 and 1016 records respectively while a decreasing trend was observed in the years 1989, 1994 and (4) Table 1 Annual research output of life science literature Year Research Output Cumulative editor@iaeme.com

4 Ambily M P and P. Sivaraman Year Research Output Cumulative Total Source wise distribution The benefit of research to society is accrued when it is communicated in the form of literature. There are different types forms of publications in which the research findings of scientists can be reported. The results of source wise analysis have been reported in Table 2. The researchers communicate their research results through various channels such as journal articles, reviews, meeting abstracts, editorial-material, and bibliographic items. As found in any other discipline, major portions of the research results in the form of articles have appeared in research journals. The journal articles rank first in order sharing percent of the total number of publications reported during the study period. Reviews come second in order sharing 5.24 percent followed by Proceedings (1.86%), Meeting Abstracts (1.56%), Letters (0.85%), Corrections (0.58%), Bibliographic Items (0.54%), and Editorial Material (0.52%). Table 2 Sources of Publications Year Articles Proceedings Meeting Abstracts Bibliographic Items Corrections Editorial Material Letters Review Total 80 editor@iaeme.com

5 Fitting of Lotka s Law with Life Sciences Literature of Kerala State, India Based On Scopus and Web of Science Year Articles Proceedings Meeting Abstracts Bibliographic Items Total % Corrections Editorial Material Letters Review Total Authorship Pattern Table 3 clearly indicates that two authored papers rank first in order sharing per cent of the total research output. The three authored papers follow second in order with per cent of the total research contributions followed by four, five, si, seven and ten or more authored contributions sharing 17.6 per cent, per cent, 6.53 per cent, 4.23 per cent and 3 per cent of the total research output during the study period respectively. However, it is interesting to note that single authored papers occupy eighth position in order witnessing 284 contributions which represent only 2.89 per cent, on the other hand eight, and nine authored contributions recorded 2.57 per cent and 1.37 per cent respectively editor@iaeme.com

6 Ambily M P and P. Sivaraman Table 3 Authorship Pattern Authorship No. of Contribution Cumulative Total Subfield wise distribution Table 4 shows the distribution of subfield wise literature that was published by life science researchers in Kerala. The analysis identified seventeen subfields of life sciences. Out of which, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology ranks first in order accounting for 2156 records that amount to percent of total output. The second rank is recorded by Plant Sciences sharing percent followed by Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology (13.28%), Environmental Sciences (11.27%), Microbiology (9.4%), Genetics & Heredity (5.58%), and Biophysics (5.55%). The other subfields that share the percentage rate between 1 and 5 percent include Ecology (5.09%), Cell Biology (4.97%), Biology (4.13%), Zoology (1.13%), and Marine & Freshwater Biology (1%). The remaining subfields namely Physiology, Horticulture, Reproductive Biology, Veterinary Sciences, and Anatomy & Morphology share less than 1 percent of contribution. However, the highest concentration was observed in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (21.92%) while the lowest concentration was observed in Anatomy & Morphology (0.08%). Table 4 Subfield Wise distribution of Life Science Literature S. No. Subfield No. of Cumulative Records 1 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Plant Sciences Biotechnology & Applied 3 Microbiology Environmental Sciences Microbiology Genetics & Heredity Biophysics Ecology Cell Biology Biology Zoology Marine & Freshwater Biology Physiology Horticulture editor@iaeme.com

7 Fitting of Lotka s Law with Life Sciences Literature of Kerala State, India Based On Scopus and Web of Science S. No. Subfield No. of Cumulative Records 15 Reproductive Biology Veterinary Sciences Anatomy & Morphology Total Application of Lotka s Law in life science literature To validate Lotka s law, a calculation was done using the equations (1 4) to identify the values of n and C to test whether application of Lotka s law fits to the data of the present study or not. The publications were ranked based on the number of publications to identify the percentage of authors who produced just one article. Based on the data, the calculated values of n and C are 1.34 and 0.77 respectively. The calculated critical value using equation (4) is 0.22 and the value of maimum difference (D) between the real and estimated accumulated frequencies is Therefore, it is clear that D value (Table 5) is less than the critical value 0.22 which resulted in fitting the application of Lotka s law to the data of literature produced by life science researchers in Kerala state of India. Table 5 Testing of Lotka s Law using LLS method y X Y 2 X XY y / y ( y / y ) n 1 / f = C(1/ e n ) f e D n=1.34; c=0.77; c.v.= 0.22; D= editor@iaeme.com

8 Ambily M P and P. Sivaraman FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION The growth trend analysis of literature in the field of life sciences lead to the following findings: A considerable amount of literature in life sciences has been produced by the researchers in Kerala witnessing 9838 publications in a span of 30 years from ; Out of various forms of publications, journal articles occupy predominant position as compared to the other forms. To sum up, the life science researchers have done enormous research work during the period of study. It is evident from the growth that witnessed starting from 34 publications in 1986 to 1016 in Testing of Lotka s law was positive on the data of life science literature retrieved from SCOPUS and Web of Science. REFERENCES [1] Glänzel, W. (2003). Bibliometrics as a Research Field: A Course on Theory and Application of Bibliometric Indicators. [2] Godin, Benoît (2006). On the Origins of Bibliometrics. Scientometrics, 68(1): [3] Johns, J. L. (1983). A Study of Institutional Productivity in Reading World : , ERIC Document Re-production service No. ED , Northern Illinois University. [4] Lotka, A.J. (1926). The Frequency Distribution of Scientific Productivity. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 16: [5] Okubo, Yoshiko (1997). Bibliometric Indicators and Analysis of Research Systems: Methods and Eamples. STI working papers, OECD. [6] Pao, M.L. (1985). Lotka s law: a testing procedure. Information processing and Management, 21(4): [7] Uzun, A. (1996). A Bibliometric Analysis of Physics Publications from Middle Eastern Countries. Scientometrics, 36: editor@iaeme.com