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1 – 10 of 159Jeppe Nicolaisen and Birger Hjørland
The purpose of this research is to examine the practical potentials of Bradford's law in relation to core‐journal identification.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to examine the practical potentials of Bradford's law in relation to core‐journal identification.
Design/methodology/approach
Literature studies and empirical tests (Bradford analyses).
Findings
Literature studies reveal that the concept of “subject” has never been explicitly addressed in relation to Bradford's law. The results of two empirical tests (Bradford analyses) demonstrate that different operationalizations of the concept of “subject” produce quite different lists of core‐journals. Further, an empirical test reveals that Bradford analyses function discriminatorily against minority views.
Practical implications
Bradford analysis can no longer be regarded as an objective and neutral method. The received view on Bradford's law needs to be revised.
Originality/value
The paper questions one of the old dogmas of the field.
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Keywords
This study aims to make recommendations for library collection development because undergraduates expect to satisfy their information need for research activities through library…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to make recommendations for library collection development because undergraduates expect to satisfy their information need for research activities through library collection. Therefore librarian should assess whether the library is adequately responding their research demands. This can be answered by analyzing citations in the dissertations.
Design/methodology/approach
The study analyzed 8,224 citations from 204 undergraduate dissertations submitted to the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2012. The most cited format was determined. Bradford’s law was applied to prepare a ranked list of journals. Accessibility of each core journals was observed and recommendations were made for collection development.
Findings
Journals were the most cited format. Data sets were fit with either the verbal formula or mathematical formula of the Bradford’s law. Core journals were determined. Core journals were accessible via number of ways. Some journals are subscribed by the Agriculture or via databases through UGC consortia (through University of Peradeniya’s library network) or open access journals. There are several journals in which the free access is available through Sri Lanka Journals OnLine. Based on the results, recommendations were made for collection development.
Originality/value
The paper provides useful insight for collection development for research demand, Agriculture Library, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.
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The purpose of this paper is to develop a standard procedure for Bradford analysis: export citations from research databases to a bibliographic management tool, separate the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a standard procedure for Bradford analysis: export citations from research databases to a bibliographic management tool, separate the desired citation fields with bibliographic output styles, and then manipulate the empirical data, formulate graph and analyze linearity with Microsoft Excel.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology mainly employed by the paper is to test the theory of Bradford's law of scattering. Based on research work and experiments, a standard procedure for Bradford analysis is to be developed.
Findings
A standard procedure for Bradford analysis is developed. The study also shows that the literature in systems librarianship follows Bradford distribution.
Originality/value
Many fields or disciplines of literature have been found to follow Bradford's law, which seems to offer a great potential promise for solving library problems. However, empirical Bradford analysis demands tedious computation, and sophisticated graphical formulation. This paper develops an easy operational procedure for Bradford analysis, which will shed light on problem solving in a similar bibliometric analysis.
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Cristina Faba-Pérez and Ana-María Cordero-González
– The purpose of this paper was to check the validity of Bradford’s Law in the contemporary world of academic electronic mailing lists.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to check the validity of Bradford’s Law in the contemporary world of academic electronic mailing lists.
Design/methodology/approach
The present research study applied Bradford’s Law to academic electronic mailing lists to determine: whether, on the Internet, mailing lists and the posts sent to them follow the same distribution as scientific journals and the articles published in them with respect to the original form of Bradford’s Law; and whether the behaviour of the Bradford distributions differs depending on the type of academic discipline (social studies or sciences) and subject category (documentation and education, medicine and life sciences) to which the list belongs. As a prior step, the utility of mailing lists was analysed during the 10-year period of 2002-2011, together with their expected future in terms of ratifying the applicability of the Law.
Findings
The results showed that, in general, electronic mailing lists are continuing to be used, and that Bradford’s Law is indeed satisfied, especially in the science subject categories, coherent with the fact that Bradford’s Law in cybermetrics holds only for fairly narrow (closed) and well-defined (homogeneous) environments.
Originality/value
The originality of the present research study was to check the validity of the historic Bradford’s Law in the contemporary world of Internet.
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Gian Singh, Moin Ahmad and Mohammad Nazim
The study aims to present a bibliometric analysis of scientific output of the plant Embelia ribes, the aim being to offer an overview of research activity in this field and…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to present a bibliometric analysis of scientific output of the plant Embelia ribes, the aim being to offer an overview of research activity in this field and characterize its most important aspects.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 332 articles were collected from following databases: Pub Med, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Abstract, Indian Science Abstract and Biological Abstract. The searches were restricted to published articles and contain the terms Embelia ribes and Vidanga. The various analyses focus on growth of literature, authorship pattern, most prolific authors, core journals of the subject, most productive institutes and countries. Lotka's law and bradford' law of scattering were applied to count the author productivity and core journals in the subject.
Findings
Most articles involved collaboration between two or three authors Author productivity was not found exactly fit to Lotka's law with a value of n = 2. However, distribution of articles in different journals was found fit to Bradford's law of scattering with the distribution of 1:n: n2.
Originality/value
The paper offers an overview of research activity into the plant Embelia ribes.
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This paper aims to explore the effective ways to utilize current awareness services (CAS) for library and information science (LIS) professionals. It seeks to identify core…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the effective ways to utilize current awareness services (CAS) for library and information science (LIS) professionals. It seeks to identify core journals for systems librarianship based on Bradford analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
The study explored the methods for CAS based on literature review, followed by Bradford analysis of systems librarianship literature, which was conducted by the quantitative analysis approach.
Findings
A core journal list for systems librarianship was built based on Bradford analysis. Three effective ways to utilize CAS by table of contents (TOCs) alerts were identified.
Originality/value
To keep up to date with the latest literature in the field of interest, LIS professionals should take advantage of CAS. The study found three effective ways to utilize CAS by TOCs alerts and identified core journals for systems librarianship. The research can help LIS professionals efficiently navigate the information tsunami to obtain the reliable and relevant information that deserves their time and attention, and stay aware of new developments in their area of interest.
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The distribution of references in a collection of pertinent source documents can be described and predicted by the relation where the parameter ß is related to the subject field…
Abstract
The distribution of references in a collection of pertinent source documents can be described and predicted by the relation where the parameter ß is related to the subject field and the completeness of the collection. The model is used to predict the reference yield of abstracting journals in a search for thermophysical property data. It is used also to explain differences among various literature studies of the past in terms of differences in subject and comprehensiveness of search. The model is derived from S. C. Bradford's ‘law of scattering’ and is called the Bradford Distribution.
Kamal Lochan Jena, Dillip K. Swain and Sada Bihari Sahu
The study aims to divulge the patterns of scholarly communication of The Electronic Library from 2003 to 2009 and to measure the coverage and quality of contributions of this…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to divulge the patterns of scholarly communication of The Electronic Library from 2003 to 2009 and to measure the coverage and quality of contributions of this journal towards LIS literature.
Design/methodology/approach
Seven volumes of The Electronic Library (TEL) published during the years 2003‐2009 collected from Emerald Management Xtra, that constituted 42 issues and a total number of 417 articles carrying 7,442 citations, have been taken up for the analysis. The study analyzes bibliographical forms, types of articles, authorship pattern, geographical distribution of contributors, chronological distribution of citations, length of articles, and ranking of journals. The study employs Bradford's Law of Scattering.
Findings
The majority of articles published in TEL fall under the category of research papers, followed by case studies, and general reviews. Regarding the bibliographical distribution of citations, it is found that the majority of citations are from journals, followed by web resources and books. The study further reveals that the average length of articles is 13.017 pages and the scattering of contributors is limited within a few countries.
Originality/value
The paper is relevant and useful to those who are interested in bibliometrics and it provides a comprehensive study of scholarly communication of The Electronic Library from 2003‐2009 for comprehending essential publishing traits of this journal during the stated period.
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Koteppa Banateppanavar, Dharanikumar P and Vindya A B
The present paper aims at analyzing the research output performance of library and information science (LIS) professionals. Citation analysis of all the journal articles published…
Abstract
Purpose
The present paper aims at analyzing the research output performance of library and information science (LIS) professionals. Citation analysis of all the journal articles published in the Collection Building journal during 2009-2012 is carried out.
Design/methodology/approach
The data for this study were drawn from a selective sample of a free e-journal, i.e. Collection Building, available through the Kuvempu University Web site without subscription or registration. A total of 91 articles published during 2009 to 2012 with 1,302 citations. The analysis cover mainly the number of articles, authorship pattern, subject-wise distribution of articles, average number of references per articles, forms of documents cited, rank list of journals, Bradford’s law.
Findings
The study reveals that journals (53.84 per cent of citations) are the most preferred sources of information used by the researchers in the field of LIS. It is followed by Web resources with 24.27 per cent, these two together constitute 78.11 per cent of total citations and remaining 21.89 per cent of citations from books, proceedings, theses, reports and gazetteer. Collection Building (USA) has ranked first with 68 (9.70 per cent) citations. Further, Bradford’s law of scattering was applied. It is observed that major citations are from journal literature. In addition, more cited materials were contributed by multi-authors, and degree of collaboration is 0.44.
Research limitations/implications
The paper presents a sense of the importance of LIS research, and as such, informs the community and researchers involved in the citation analysis.
Originality/value
The outcome of the study is an original research work with citation analysis of LIS publications. The study highlights the information materials available and used by researchers in the field of LIS, and those that need to be added for a healthy collection.
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Aragudige Nagaraja and A.B Prashanth
This study aims to analyze the resources used in the citations of 156 postgraduate dissertations submitted to the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) through the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the resources used in the citations of 156 postgraduate dissertations submitted to the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) through the Acharya & BM Reddy College of Pharmacy (ABMRCP), and prepares the core journal list according to the Bradford’s law of scattering. For any research and academic institutional libraries, books and journals are considered as key resources. As the resources are more and diverse, collection building is a tough task for librarians. Citation analysis is one of the best methods to list the most used resources by the users. The paper highlights the extent use of in-house resources and open access journals in the citations.
Design/methodology/approach
Citations of PG dissertations during 2010-2013 (four years) were compiled, the data about the resources cited in each were taken and the list of resources used in PG dissertations was prepared. The list of core journals obtained by citation analysis was matched with the list of online journals provided by Health Science Library & Information Network (HELINET) of RGUHS as well as print list of journals subscribed by ABMRCP Library, and evaluated the print and online consortia journals used by ABMRCP community. The list of core journals’ ranking in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) list-pharmaceutical sciences was identified to know the impact of the journals.
Findings
The study gives the list of different information resources cited in the pharmacy dissertations. The core list obtained by applying the Bradford’s law of scattering in this study has 19 journals pertaining to pharmacy. After matching the core list with the Keogh’s list, it is found that 31 journals can be considered very useful in the field of pharmacy. Twelve journals listed in the core list have different positions in the SJR ranking 2013. The results indicate that open-access journals with online journals subscribed through HELINET and print holdings have been cited more in the PG dissertations.
Originality/value
The topic of journal use in this case may be of greatest interest to those who purchase journals in the sciences and, very specifically, the pharmaceutical sciences.
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