Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Education and Research ( ) a bibliometric analysis

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1 242 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., DECEMBER 2009 Annals of Library and Information Studies Vol. 56, December 2009, pp Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Education and Research ( ) a bibliometric analysis A. P. Kulkarni 1, Balaji Poshett 2 and G. R. Narwade 2 1 Head, Quality Assurance Department, Y. B. Chavan College of Pharmacy, Roza Bagh, Aurangabad-01, alpakul2005@yahoo.com 2 Assistant Librarian, Nanded Pharmacy College, Shyamnagar, Nanded Bibliometric analysis of the journal Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Education and Research reveals that journals are the predominant citation source followed by books. Analysis shows that majority of the scientists preferred to publish research papers in multiple authorship and there is considerable time lag in publication of articles from the date of receipt of the papers. Introduction Initially, bibliometric study was a simple statistical method of counting to evaluate and quantify the growth of a subject 1. Bibliometric techniques are now being used for a variety of purposes like determination of various scientific indicators, evaluation of scientific output, selection of journals for the libraries, forecasting the research potential of a particular field 2 and so on. Bibliometric studies can be applied to any discipline to find out trends and growth of the literature. The selection of source for collection of the data is very important in such studies. Since journal articles include current research, usually journals are considered as a source for testing 3. Bibliometric studies of many journals have been carried out in the past 4-9. Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, the source journal of the present bibliometric study is published by the Association of Pharmaceutical Teachers of India (APTI). It is a quarterly journal that publishes the original research work of the authors, review articles, short communications. It also publishes notes, book reviews, reports of seminars and conferences, synopsis of doctoral thesis, interviews with eminent personalities, continuing pharmaceutical education, invited editorial, institutional news, APTI news etc. The study pertains to data collected from the journal for the period Objective of the study To study the year-wise distribution, authorship pattern, number and types of citations for individual articles, number of pages per articles, time lag in publishing the article, geographical distribution of articles, and subject trend of articles. Methodology The study covers eleven volumes (volume 30-40) containing 42 issues of IJPER during the years (4 th issue of volume 32 was dedicated to constitution and development of APTI; 4 th issue of volume 35 was published in the memory of Hon. M. L. Shroff). The data collected was recorded on to sheets with predesigned columns. All the required data like (a) title of article, (b) subject, (c) number of authors, (d) number of pages, (e) date of receipt, date of acceptance and date of publication of the articles, (f) number of references and their forms, (h) the institute s address were tabulated. The data was subjected to the analysis as per the objective of the study. Analysis of the studies Year-wise distribution of publications Table 1 gives the year-wise distribution of articles in the journal. The number varies from year to year and the number of articles have increased during The years 2005 and 2006 have the highest number of 43

2 KULKARNI & NARWADE : INDIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH 243 Table 1 Year-wise distribution of publications Year No of articles % of articles No of articles per issue Total Table 2 Citation pattern Year No of articles No of Average citations Average citation citations per article s per journal issue Total publications (13.92%). The year 1997 has the minimum number of 17 articles which is 5.5%. Maximum number of articles published per issue is 10.8 in the year 2005 and 2006 each. Minimum number of articles published per issue was in 1997 when only 17 articles were published during that year. Citation pattern Table 2 shows the number of citations, total number of citations, and average number of citations per article as well as per issue. A Total of 4450 citations are distributed amongst 42 journal issues having 309 articles. It is

3 244 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., DECEMBER 2009 Table 3 Bibliographical distribution of citations Year Journals Books Proceedings Reports Theses Patents Electronic Others* Total Total *Other sources include ISO guidelines, WHO guidelines, pharmacist s oath, hand book of laws, gazettes, abstracts, newspapers, pharmacopoeias, workshop manuals, bulletins of pharmaceutical industries and hospitals, software, syllabi. Table 4 Authorship pattern Year Single author Joint authors Three authors More than three Total authors Total observed that the number of citations per year varies from year to year. The year 2004 has the highest number of citations per article. Bibliographical distribution of citations The bibliographical forms of citations are divided into broad categories that include journals, books, proceedings, reports, theses, patents, electronic media and others. Table 3 represents the year-wise distribution of citations. From the Table it can be observed that journals are cited predominantly in all the years followed by books. Both the types constitute 85.32% of total citations. Other sources constitute 5.19% of total citations and they include ISO guidelines, WHO guidelines, pharmacist s oath, hand book of laws, gazettes, abstracts, newspapers, pharmacopoeias, workshop manuals, bulletins of

4 KULKARNI & NARWADE : INDIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH 245 Table 5 Average length of articles Year No. of articles No. of pages Cumulative no. of pages Average no. of pages per article pharmaceutical industries and hospitals, softwares, syllabi, etc. Authorship pattern The authorship pattern determines the type of research. It is found from Table 4 that out of 309 articles, the number of single authored articles is the highest and it accounts for 32.0%. The two authored articles are 25.89% followed by multiple authored articles. Length of articles The average length of articles and the total number pages of articles are shown in Table 5. The table shows that the average length of articles is 4.74 pages. It is also observed that the average length of articles varied from a minimum of 2.88 pages to a maximum of 6.98 pages. Time lag The time lag is the time taken between the date of receipt of a paper (for publication) and the date of actual publication of the same. The information regarding the date of receipt and date of acceptance of articles is not available for 4 issues of volumes (years ) and for first two issues of volume 35 (2001). The tables 6(a), 6(b) and 6(c) represent the average time taken between the dates of receipt of articles to the acceptance of articles, time elapsed between the dates of acceptance of articles to the publication of articles, and time elapsed from receipt to publication of articles respectively. The tables indicate that the average time taken between the dates of receipt of articles to the acceptance of articles is days. The average time for acceptance to publication is days. The average time for receipt to publication is days. Minimum time required from receipt to acceptance is 2 days. Maximum time required for the same is 580 days. Minimum time required from acceptance to publication is 1 day. Maximum time required for the same is 389 days. Minimum time required from receipt to publication is 12 days, whereas maximum time required for the same is 742 days. Geographical distribution of contributors The distribution of publications with the rank is given in Table 7. During analysis it is observed that most of the articles are contributed by Indian authors. The number of Indian contributors is 272 and the percentage is 93.15, while foreign contributors are 6.47%. As maximum contributors are from India, the geographical spread of contributors from India was studied. From Table 7 it is found that Karnataka contributed highest number of articles (75, 24.27%) followed by Maharashtra (72, 23.3%). Tamil Nadu contributed 36 articles with 11.65% and occupied third position. Chandigarh contributed 21 articles with 6.8% and occupied fourth position. Other states have contributed 88 articles with 33.08%. Subject areas of the articles All the articles in the journal was studied and classified under various areas. It was found that papers on pharmaceutical education constituted the highest number of articles during the period (87, 28.16%) (Table 8). The subjects pharmaceutics and pharma-

5 246 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., DECEMBER 2009 Table 6(a) Time lag between receipt to acceptance of paper Year Average time taken Minimum time taken Maximum time taken from receiving to the publication (in days) (in days) of article (in days) Data not available Data not available Data not available Table 6(b) Time lag between acceptance to publication of paper Year Average time taken Minimum time taken Maximum time taken from receiving to the publication (in days) (in days) of article (in days) Data not available Data not available Data not available Table 6(c) Time lag between receipt to publication of paper Year Average time taken Minimum time taken Maximum time taken from receiving to the publication (in days) (in days) of article (in days) Data not available Data not available Data not available ceutical chemistry constituted equal number of articles (53, 17.15%) followed by pharmacology having 38 number of articles (12.29). Other headings constituted 77 articles. Conclusion The increasing number of contributions in the journal shows that the journal is a respected primary publication for all those who are serious about pharmaceutical

6 KULKARNI & NARWADE : INDIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH 247 Table 7 Geographical distribution of contributors Sl. No. State No. of articles Cumulative no of % contribution Cumulative % articles contribution 1 Karnataka Maharashtra Tamil Nadu Chandigarh Delhi Gujarat Andhra Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan West Bengal Uttar Pradesh Bihar Kerala Foreign Others* *Others include articles where the place of contributor is not mentioned Table 8 Subject-wise distribution of articles Sl. No. Subject No. of articles % of articles 1 Pharmaceutical Education Pharmaceutical and Analytical Chemistry Pharmaceutics Pharmacology Pharmacy Practice and Community Pharmacy Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry Pharmaceutical Management and Biotechnology Forensic pharmacy

7 248 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., DECEMBER 2009 education in India. The journal is popular among Indian researchers. The journal should strive to reduce the time lag between the date of receipt and the date of publication of the articles. References 1. Kamal L and Jena A, A bibliometric analysis of the Indian Journal of Fiber and Textile Research , Annals of Library and Information Studies, 53 (1) (2006) Ramkrishnan J and Babu B R, Literature on hepatitis ( ): A bibliometric analysis, Annals of Library and Information Studies, 54 (2007) Daim T U, Rudeda G, Martin H,and Gerdsri P, Forecasting emerging technologies: Use of bibliometrics and patent analysis, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 73 (8) (2006) Raut T K, Sahu S B, and Ganguly S, Strategic Management Journal: A citation study, Annals of Library and Information Studies, 55 (3) (2008) Garg K C, Sharma P, and Kumar S, Scientometric profile of the journal Mausam, Annals of Library and Information Studies, 55 (3) (2008) Kumar S and Kumar S, Citation analysis of Journal of Oilseeds Research, Annals of Library and Information Studies, 55 (3) (2008) Koley S and Sen B K, Indian Journal of Applied Physiology and allied sciences : an analysis of citation pattern, Annals of Library and Information Studies, 50 (1) (2003) Datta B, Das A K, and Sen B K, A comparative study of citations patterns among 8 scholarly journals published by NISCAIR, Annals of Library and Information Studies, 49 (4) (2002) Willett P, A bibliometric analysis of the Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modeling, Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modeling, 26 (2007)