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The purpose of the study is to conduct a scientometric analysis of cybersecurity literature indexed in the core collection of the Web of Science for a period of ten years (2011–2020).

Cybersecurity is a focused topic of research across the globe. To identify the global research productivity in the field, the terms “cybersecurity, cyber-security, web security, information security, computer security, etc.” were used for retrieving the publications in the advanced search mode of the database “Web of Science”, limiting the time frame for 2011– 2020. The results retrieved were downloaded in the Excel file for further analysis and interpretation. The harvested data was analysed by using scientometric techniques to measure the progress such as growth rate, doubling time and author collaborations. Besides, the Biblioshiny and VOSviewer software were used for mapping networks.

The research output in the field of cybersecurity has shown an increasing trend during 2011–2020, and the maximum number of scholarly publications was published in 2020 (1,581), i.e. more than 715% of 2011 (221). A good number of countries (93) have contributed globally in cybersecurity research, and the highest share in research publications was reported by the USA (23.55%), followed by China (23.24%), South Korea (5.31%), UK (5.28%) and India (4.25%). The authorship patterns in cybersecurity publications show a collaborative trend, as most articles have been published by multiple authors. Total 5,532 (90.14%) articles have been published in co-authorship, whereas only 605 (9.86%) articles have been published by single authors. Keyword analysis shows that the most common keyword research by the authors is cybersecurity and its variants such as “cyber security” and “cyber-security” (1,698) followed by security (782), computer security (680) and information security (329).

The database studied for the work does not represent the total literary output available on the theme. There are plenty of other databases, such as Scopus, Compendex, INSPEC, IEEE Xplore, arXiv, contributing to the same theme as well.

The findings of the study may help researchers, information technologists, library professionals and information specialists to identify the research progress, authorship patterns, collaborative networks and hot topics of research in the field of cybersecurity. Besides, it will assess the global response to the cybersecurity issue.

The study is the scientometric analysis of the cybersecurity based on current literature and will highlight the progress and development of global research in the said field.

The study's main purpose is to scrutinize Google Scholar profiles and find the answer to the question, “Do authors play fair or manipulate Google Scholar Bibliometric Indicators like h-index and i10-index?”

The authors scrutinized the Google Scholar profiles of the top 50 library and science researchers claiming authorship of 21,022 publications. The bibliographic information of all the 21,022 publications like authorship and subject details were verified to identify accuracy, discrepancies and manipulation in their authorship claims. The actual and fabricated entries of all the authors along with their citations were recorded in the Microsoft Office Excel 2007 for further analyses and interpretation using simple arithmetic calculations.

The results show that the h-index of authors obtained from the Google Scholar should not be approved at its face value as the variations exist in the publication count and citations, which ultimately affect their h-index and i10 index. The results reveal that the majority of the authors have variations in publication count (58%), citations (58%), h-index (42%) and i10-index (54%). The magnitude of variation in the number of publications, citations, h-index and i10-index is very high, especially for the top-ranked authors.

The scope of the study is strictly restricted to the faculty members of library and information science and cannot be generalized across disciplines. Further, the scope of the study is limited to Google Scholar and caution needs to be taken to extend results to other databases like Web of Science and Scopus.

The study has practical implications for authors, publishers, and academic institutions. Authors must stop the unethical research practices; publishers must adopt techniques to overcome the problem and academic institutions need to take precautions before hiring, recruiting, promoting and allocating resources to the candidates on the face value of the Google Scholar h-index. Besides, Google needs to work on the weak areas of Google Scholar to improve its efficacy.

The study brings to light the new ways of manipulating bibliometric indicators like h-index, and i10-index provided by Google Scholar using false authorship claims.