CHAPTER III RESEARCH DESIGN

Transcription

1 CHAPTER III RESEARCH DESIGN 3.1 INTRODUCTION This study aims at evaluating the research productivity of various countries from the faculty, researchers and scientists on publications relating to Aquaculture, by means of their bibliographic output. Publication productivity is the top most measure in fixing the researcher s performance capability by various national and regional governments. Also this study attempts to explain the theoretical and empirical discussions relating to research publications in the field of Aquaculture from the various published reports. Scientometrics techniques are engaged to analyze the publications on Aquaculture studies to identify the trends in the publication, the thematic pattern, etc. 3.2 NEED FOR THE STUDY The assessment of aquaculture research output using scientometric technique is a valuable method for the identification of new scientific and technological knowledge. Publication profile is an indicator of the scientific activity of a country. It was seen from the available literature that a little study was done in this field. Many important observations can be derived by studying scientific publication through their bibliographic features. For these reasons, it is proposed to study quantitatively the literature published on Aquaculture by using the SCOPUS bibliographic database. 3.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The last decades have observed a huge quantity of publications addressing Aquaculture. Many of the publications have revealed the issue of Aquaculture and its consequence on maintaining the information technology. Due to scattered publications, the findings of this research have not been visible to the policy makers. In order to overcome this problem, this study attempts to convert the publications into a comprehensive database. The researcher intended to undertake as it was observed that there is a little study in this field. The research topic of the study is on Evaluation of Research Publications in the field of Aquaculture: A Scientometric Analysis. The Study aims to ascertain the growth of literature, source of publication, identification of prolific authors, institution, identifications of core journals, etc. in the 55

2 field of Aquaculture for the period of Applicability of Lotka s law and Bradford s law has also been applied. This would be a major work towards consolidating the research output process on one side and facilitating the visibility of the publications on the other. This database covers information relating to the titles, authors, author affiliation, methodology adopted and the Indian country coverage of the global publications during the study period. 3.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The major objectives are framed with the unique principle of the present study as mentioned below: To identify the source of continent and country wise distribution of aquaculture research output. To compare and to measure the Relative growth rate and Exponential growth of Aquaculture research output. To identify the proportion of single and multi-authored papers and the degree of collaboration in Aquaculture research. To test the applicability of Lotka s law, Price s Square root law and Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) to be used for the author productivity in the field of Aquaculture research. To test the applicability of Bardford s law of scattering in the field of Aquaculture research. 3.5 HYPOTHESES Keeping the content and coverage of the objectives framed, the following hypotheses are formulated and tested with appropriate statistical tools: 1. There is a declining trend in the Relative Growth Rate (RGR) and correspondingly an increasing trend in the Doubling time (Dt) in aquaculture research. 2. Collaborative research dominates in the field of aquaculture. 3. The aquaculture research productivity confirms the implications of Bibliometric Laws. 4. There exists a significant level of difference between aquaculture research performance of Indian scientists and scientists of other countries. 5. Among the developing countries, USA contributes substantially to the aquaculture research. 56

3 3.6 METHODOLOGY The present study attempts to analyze the research output performance of Aquaculture area. It aims to identify the distribution of research output on the basis of research papers contributed by Scientists in the field of Aquaculture. The study probes to examine the growth rate and relative growth level during the study period. The author productivity and degree of collaboration on Aquaculture research output are also brought under the purview of the study. The study aims to analyze the thrust areas of research concentration on Aquaculture. This study is mainly exploratory in nature in identifying the research performance of global Scientists in the field of Aquaculture and it is also analytical in nature with the suitable statistical tools applications in strengthening the empirical validity. 3.7 SAMPLING The present study attempts to analyze the research output performance of in the field of Aquaculture. It aims to identify the distribution of continent and country wise on the basis of research papers contributed by scientists in aquaculture from various types of documents. The study probes to examine the Relative growth rate, absolute growth level, Exponential growth and Doubling time of publication during the study period. The author s productivity and degree of collaboration in aquaculture research output are also brought under the purview of the study. The choice of selection of the subject is left with its emerging familiarity out of various disciplines of science. It could be noted that the research implications of Aquaculture contributes to technological advancement of our society along with socio-economic development. Aquaculture is the backbone of every country for their fulfillment of food necessity. Hence the development of research on Aquaculture is of huge validity in accelerating the economic development of the every country. By keeping these facts in mind the researcher has chosen Aquaculture as the field of research focus. 3.8 SCOPE OF THE STUDY The present study is based on the status of aquaculture research productivity indexed in Scopus database international multidisciplinary bibliographical database ( during 1999 to The cumulative publications, authors, authorship pattern, country with continent, document types and languages of 15 years (1999 to 2013) have been taken. In this study, the researcher examines the status of 57

4 and progress on aquaculture scientists output. This study also identifies the factor underlying its growth, stagnation and decline. 3.9 DATA COLLECTION There are various sources contributing to the research output in the field of Aquaculture by global Scientists. In this study secondary sources are taken for analysis from the data base of Scopus. In this study sources relating to primary journals, proceedings of national and international organizations congress, symposia, reports and other secondary sources are taken for consideration. The aquaculture research publications by the specific scientists covered from SCOPUS database are taken of the study. The data have been retrieved from the Scopus database in the first week of February The search string AQUACULTURE gets 1,06,227 records for this analysis and are saved in the format of MS Excel for further analysis. The data covered the years 1999 to 2013 (15 years) only STATISTICAL TOOLS Relative Growth Rate (RGR) The relative growth rate is the increase in the number of publications/pages per unit of time. Here, one year is taken as the unit of time. The mean relative growth rate R (1-2) over a specified period of interval can be calculated from the following equation suggested by Mahapatra: W 2 W 1 R (1-2) = T 2 T 1 where, R = Mean relative growth rate over the specific period of interval; W 1 = log w 1 (Natural log of initial number of publications/ pages); W 2 = log w 2 (Natural log of initial number of publications/pages); T 2 -T 1 = Unit difference between the initial time and final time. Therefore, R (a) = Relative growth rate per unit of publications per unit of time (yr) R (p) = Relative growth rate per unit of pages per unit of time (year) 58

5 Exponential Growth Rate (EGR) We use exponential growth rate to calculate the rate of population growth. Let us know how to calculate exponential growth rate and what it is. There are two types of growth rate such as exponential growth rate and linear growth rate. Exponential growth rate gives the relative growth rate of the population as it depends upon the current population. Linear growth rate, on the other hand, does not depend upon the current growth rate, so we mostly prefer calculating exponential growth rate. Exponential growth rate can be used to predict future population of any species of animals. It is used globally to predict human population. If one knows the periodic rate i.e., the number of years through which the growth rate is to be calculated and the original population. One can calculate exponential growth rate with ease. The formula for calculating exponential growth is given as: N (t) = N (0) e rt Where, N (t) is the population when the time elapsed is t years N (0) is the initial population r is the growth rate t is number of years e is the natural base of logarithms whose value is Double Time (DT) A direct equivalence exists between the relative growth rate and doubling time. If the number of publications/pages of a subject doubles during a given period, then the difference between the logarithms of the numbers at the beginning and at the end of the period must be the logarithms of the number 2. This difference has a value of Thus, the corresponding doubling time for publication and pages can be calculated by the following formula: Doubling time (Dt) = R Therefore, Doubling time for publications Dt (a) = R (a) 59

6 Degree of Collaboration (DC) The degree of collaboration is defined as the ratio of the number of collaborative research papers to the total number of research papers in the discipline during a certain period of time. The formula suggested by Subramanyam 2 is used. It is expressed as N m C = N m + N s Where, C is the degree of collaboration in a discipline. N m is the number of multi-authored research papers in the discipline published during a year. N s is the number of single authored papers in the discipline published during the same year. Using this formula, the degree of collaboration is determined. Based on this study, the result of degree of collaboration C = i.e, 62% of collaborative authors articles is published in this study Priority Index (PI) Priority Index (PI) has been calculated to properly normalize the size of a country and the size of the subject field so that cross national comparisons can be done for these Frontier areas of research computer communication. Priority Index is computed by the following formula: (N ij / N io ) Priority Index = X 100 (N oj / N oo ) where, N ij N io = the number of publications of country i in subfield j = the number of publications of country i is in all subfields of the major fields N oj = the number of publications of all countries viz., the total world output in subfield j N oo = the number of publications in all sub fields of those major fields This index is identical to AI proposed (by Frame, 1977) 3 and subsequently used among others by Schubert and Braun (Schubert and Carpenter, et al. 60

7 Carpenter, 1988). The value of PI = 100 indicates that research priority of a country for a given subfield corresponds precisely to the average of all countries. PI = 100 indicates average priority, PI > 100 indicates higher than average priority and PI < 100, lower than average priority. It should, however, be kept in mind that (by virtue of definition of PI), no country can have high or low priority in all subfields. From the values of PI, we can compare (1) The priorities of a given country to different subfields in a given time span (2) The priorities of different countries to a given subfield in a given time span (3) The priority to a given subfield in different time spans Specialization Index (SI) Using the specialization Index, a researcher can quickly identify the disciplines in which a country, region, institution or any other achieves has greater research output than in all other disciplines. The SI can be represented in two ways. First, as stated above, an aggregate is said to be specialized, when it produces more in a specific discipline than in all other disciplines. The second approach is to consider an aggregate as specialized when its percentage of output in a given discipline is higher than the other aggregates contributing to a system. In other words, the second approach indicates more precisely the specializing in which an aggregate s output is larger or smaller than the average of a group. These two ways of representing the specialization index are equivalent and produce the same result, as shown below. Each approach has a corresponding formula for calculating the specialization index. Thus, specialization index of a group X relates to a reference group Y (IS x/y ) and it can be calculated in two ways: (X α / X t ) IS x/y = P xα / P yα (Y α / Y t ) (or) (X α / Y α ) IS x/y = P αx / P αy (X t / Y t ) 61

8 where, X α = Number of articles published by group X in discipline α Y α = Number of articles published by group Y in discipline α X t = Total number of articles published by reference group X Y t = Total number of articles published by reference group Y P xα = Percentage of articles of group X belonging to discipline α P yα = Percentage of articles of group Y belonging to discipline α P αx = Percentage of articles in discipline α produced by group X P αy = Percentage of articles in discipline α produced by group Y Group X is always a subset of group Y. An index higher than 1.0 indicates that X is specialized in relation to Y, an index lower than 1.0 indicates that group X has not specialized in discipline α. The SI is in very widespread use, often being given a different name. It is often called the revealed scientific advantage in the Anglo-Saxon world (Soete and Wyatt, 1983) 6, While trend researchers may use the term Indice d effort Specifique (Filiatreans. et.al., 2003), Science metrix and the OST use the term Specialization Index in all their reports. The SI is a relative indicator providing relatively complex, highly synthesized data. It is one of the best indicators for determining the areas, where research output of one group differs from that of the others. The advantage of using SI is relatively easy to calculate. The disadvantage is that it requires data on both specific disciplines and total output of a reference population. The bibliometrician therefore needs complete databases in order to be able to produce data by using this indicator OTHER TOOLS The applied percentage analysis and average are also applied apart from the above statistical tools. Graphic and diagrammatic representations are presented wherever necessary Concepts present study. The following concepts are operationally defined for the purpose of the 62

9 Relative Growth Rate It explains the increase in the number of publications of aquaculture research output during different periods Doubling Time for the Publications It means two fold multiplication of number of publications on aquaculture research output during the periods Scientometrics and Bibliometrics Scientometrics and bibliometrics 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 Aquaculture It explains the research studies conducted throughout the international pertaining to Aquaculture research generation through Information Technology Cognitive Structure It explains the development of area wise research output in Aquaculture, continent wise research performance and co-classification analysis of the taken subfields Authorship Pattern It denotes the percentage concentration of single authored documents in relation to multiauthored documents on Aquaculture during the reference period of analysis Author Productivity It denotes the percentage concentration of single authored current trend in carrying out the research process on Aquaculture in terms of the coverage to which the research performance is concentrated by a single author. 63

10 Degree of Collaboration It explains the prevalence of proportion of single authored articles and multiauthored articles on research output publication of the Aquaculture Priority Index The Priority index indicates research priority of a country for a given subfield that corresponds precisely to the average of all countries Activity Index Activity Index is used to measure the productivity of individual continents and countries output in relation to the world contribution in the field of Aquaculture Specialization Index Using the Specialization Index, a researcher can quickly identify the disciplines in which a country, region, institution or any other aggregate achieves greater research output than in all other disciplines LIMITATIONS The findings of this study are relevant only to Aquaculture and its subfields research output. This study covers Aquaculture with respect to the framed few main themes, which are related to the Aquaculture field, brought under the purview of the study and not other themes. This study makes a special attention only on the performance of research output in Aquaculture. The aquaculture research publications by the specific scientists covered from SCOPUS database are taken of the study. The data were retrieved from the Scopus database in the first week of February The search string AQUACULTURE gets 1,06,227 records for this analysis and are saved in the format of MS Excel for further analysis. The data covered the years of 1999 to 2013 (15 years) only. 64

11 REFERENCES 1. Mahapatra, M.(1985). On the Validity of the Theory of Exponential Growth of Scientific Literature, Proceedings of the 15th IASLIC Conference, Bangalore, P Subramanyam, K. (1983). Bibliometric Studies of Research Collaboration. A Review, Journal of Information Science, 6: Frame, J.D. (1977). Mainstream Research in Latin America and the Caribbean, Intersciencia, 2: Schubert, A. and Braun, T. (1986). Relative Indicators and Relational Charts for Comparative Assessment of Publication Output and Citation Impact, Scientometrics, 4(2): Karki, M.M.S., Garg, K.C. and Sharma, Praveen. (2000). Activity and Growth of Organic Chemistry Research in India Using , Scientometrics, 49 (2): P oced/5/43/pdf 7. Lotka s Law Revised. Library Trends, 30 (1) 1981, pp