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The study seeks to understand the influences on the prevalence of rural retailing institution of periodic markets. It examines the influence of access to and population of the location on the performance of periodic markets and their effect on the competition between periodic markets and local rural retail stores.

Simultaneous cross-sectional study on census data is used to understand changes in performance of periodic markets in the context of growth in retail stores.

The superior performance of local retail shop compared to outshopping in periodic markets is contrary to observation in literature developed in the context of urban outshopping.

Retail chains need to develop a separate program for location of outlets that serve rural areas as access influences retail performance. In rural areas marketers can use traditional periodic markets in addition to conventional retail store given the limited inter-format retail competition.

This is one of the few studies to explicitly examine periodic markets as a retail format. Outshopping is studied in the context of growth in local retail stores unlike earlier studies in the urban context where the local stores exhibit reduced sales.

The purpose of this paper is to report results of a study which investigated the growth of open access (OA) journals across the world with reference to the Asian region. Details of 117 OA journals were collected from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to determine the geographic distribution, language of publication and growth of periodical year-wise. The study makes detail analysis of four OA periodical published from India, Iran, Pakistan and Taiwan. Pattern of authorship and contribution according to nature of professional work were analyzed. The study reveals that most contributions were made by teaching professionals in comparison to working library and information officers. Single-authored contributions dominated (44 per cent) in all periodicals of the Asian region, indicating low amount of teamwork/collaborative contributions to library and information science (LIS) research by the authors of this region. To know the subject distribution of articles, the study was limited to 27 subfields within the broad spectrum of LIS. Annals of Library and Information Sciences (ALIS) published in India carried the highest number of articles (165) followed by Journal of Library and Information Sciences (JLIS) from Taiwan. The findings of the study also indicate that there is varied distribution of topics within the Asian LIS literature published in OA journals. Most popular areas of writing among authors in OA journals have been found to be bibliometics, webometrics, research productivity or research methods besides information seeking pattern, information need of users and digital libraries.

To gather data for the present investigation, survey of OA e-journals was made across the Web. The collection of data from OA journals and content was accompanied by searching the DOAJ. After selecting the OA journals, these were analyzed using the descriptions on their content page and key words chosen from each contribution. Selection of additional key words, i.e. words not in the title, was also made. Analysis of this data is discussed in this paper.

OA removes restrictions that exist on access to scholarly information and knowledge, it empowers the readers to read, download, distribute and make use of relevant literature, besides giving authors and their work fairly good visibility, readership and impact. The OA movement is gaining importance and the scholarly community is now realizing that tolled or subscribed access is creating a barrier and preventing their work from wider accessibility and readership. A number of journals across the world are now being published in OA mode. The present study attempts to map the growth of LIS literature in OA journals with special reference to periodicals published from Asian countries. The finding of this sample study suggests that many counties are promoting OA journals. While USA ranks first in publication of OA journals in the world. Taiwan publishes the highest number of articles in Asia. Majority of OA journals are published in English, and English appears to be most popular language for communicating research information. Of the four OA LIS journals analyzed in detail, it is observed that single-authored contributions are most popular. Collaborative contributions to LIS research were not so evident among authors of the Asian community. The teaching professionals or LIS teachers contributed the greatest number of articles, except for the Indian journal ALIS, demonstrating that working professional are more actively involved in writing and they outnumber the teaching community. Contributions from research students in all OA journals have been fairly significant. Research students may be encouraged to publish their master’s and doctoral research work in OA periodicals for better visibility, readership and impact. The study further reveals that ALIS from India and JLIS from Taiwan carried the highest number of articles. While areas like bibliometrics, webometrics and e-resources and OA are most popular areas of writing among Indian authors, information-seeking pattern, information need, digital and virtual libraries have been popular among authors from Taiwan. Webology from Iran has predominant articles on Web study or evaluation and social networking. Universities and LIS need to come forward to take a need-based approach to LIS research, suggesting ways for improving existing LIS services in their respective countries. To get the correct picture of growth of OA journals in the Asian region, more exhaustive and extensive study may be required. Researchers interested to carry further investigation will have to adopt appropriate measures to overcome the limitations mentioned in the study, for example, the source of data DOAJ may not be very extensive to give correct picture of OA journals. It is likely that some journals may not have been included in this directory. Researchers interested to carry further investigations will have to adopt appropriate measures to overcome these constraints.

Scope and limitation access to data and timely completion are the two vital factors for the success and accomplishment of the objectives of any investigation. Hence, considering the vast range of literature from every geographical region and limited time to complete research, the present study adhered to the following limitations. The study covers in its scope literature published in the period of five years (accessed from March 28 to May 25, 2011, only). The study includes only those publications/journals contributed by authors in English. The study includes four OA journals having full-text articles in English, abstracts not included. It considers those publications primarily inclined and relevant to library and information services. The study includes only those OA LIS journals listed or included in DOAJ.

The present study has been taken with view to analyze the growth of OA journals in LIS with special reference to Asian countries. While several studies have been conducted on growth and publishing of traditional LIS journals, the present study is perhaps an interesting attempt to make a comprehensive review of the phenomena. The finding of the recent study will be of interest to many LIS professionals, researchers and academicians as it demonstrate the growth of OA journals.

The article is an abbreviated form of the author's MA thesis, and comprises the results of an analysis of publication and citation of economics literature. The growth of the monograph literature of economics seems to be below average, but a high birthrate of economics journals together with a growth in their size gives a high growth rate of periodical literature. From the analysis of citations in nine journals for 1950, 1960, and 1968 a shortening of the active life of both journal and non‐journal literature is found. A high degree of concentration of journal use is shown, over 70% of journal citations being from 20 titles, and the concentration is shown to be increasing. A rise in the use of unpublished material, especially working papers is indicated. Comparisons are made of the research use, measured by citations, with undergraduate use, measured by an analysis of reading lists at three British universities. Some tentative implications of the results for library policy are suggested.

Semiconductor physics literature is studied in order to investigate recent hypotheses relating obsolescence to the growth in periodical literature and the growth in the number of contributing scientists. The results indicate that obsolescence remains constant and that the two growth rates are, within experimental error, of equal magnitude for this subject over a five‐year period. These results are seen to be inconsistent with the assumption that an exponentially‐growing literature possesses a constant utility.

The purpose of this study is to reflect a growing trend toward the introduction of new research journals in India. The study focuses on the number of journals introduced in India during the past decade, namely, for the period 2005-2014. Some of the key aspects analyzed include year-wise distribution of journals introduced, cumulative and annual corresponding growth of newly introduced journals, publishing form of journals, namely, online, print and hybrid. Some other aspects studied include distribution of journals on the basis of language, periodicity, state, etc. for both online and print journals.

To undertake the present study, data were retrieved from the official website of the National Science Library, New Delhi, and the analysis is based on the number of ISSN numbers issued by the National Science Library New Delhi during the period of study.

A total of 15,631 research journals were introduced in India from 2005 through 2014. Compared to 4,954 (31.69 per cent) online journals, 10,614 (67.90 per cent) print journals were introduced in India during the past decade, depicting print as the larger medium of journal publishing in India. During the period of study, research journals in India grew annually at 31.44 per cent. New Delhi, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh emerged as the three leading research journal publishing states of the country, while 82.86 per cent journals are published in English language and a maximum 32.52 per cent journals are published on a quarterly basis.

The study is first of its kind undertaken in India.

The expression ‘half‐life’, borrowed from physics, has appeared quite frequently in the literature on documentation since 1960, when an article by Burton and Kebler on The ‘half‐life’ of some scientific and technical literatures was published, although it had certainly been used previously. Burton and Kebler point out that literature becomes obsolescent rather than disintegrating (as in its original meaning), so that ‘half‐life’ means ‘half the active life’, and this is commonly understood as meaning the time during which one‐half of the currently active literature was published. Numerous studies have been carried out, mainly by the analysis of citations, to establish obsolescence rates of the literature of different subjects. Bourne points out that different studies have given widely different results, so that many of the ‘half‐life’ figures reported are not valid beyond the particular sample of literature or users surveyed; certainly they cannot be used as accurate measures for discriminating between different subject‐fields.

Little attention has been given to the long term effects of cancelling periodicals. A case study of Stirling University Library between 1973/76 and 1978/79 is used to demonstrate that cancelling periodicals can significantly increase a library's workload.

Somewhat paradoxically workers in information are just as typically human as in any other profession in the matter of order in their own backyard. To put it mildly, the situation in our periodicals—their genesis, use, purpose, and efficiency—is just as haphazard, if not more so, as in the whole field of communication. Perhaps we have the lame excuse that we are too busy working out remedies for the bibliographical mess in the literature of the sciences and the technologies. Nevertheless, we must cast a critical eye on the problem, which will have to be tackled both nationally as well as internationally through IFLA, FID, and Unesco.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the growth and development of periodical literature on Web 2.0 technologies and their other fields.

Bibliographic data of the articles published in the 13 leading peer‐reviewed journals are obtained from the Emerald database (www.emeraldinsight.com) directly using such keywords as “Web 2.0”, “blogs”, “wikis”, “RSS”, “social networking sites”, “podcasts”, “Mashup”, and multimedia sharing tools, i.e. YouTube and Flickr. The bibliographical surrogates such as author, title, subtitle, source, issue, volume, pages, etc. were recorded in MS‐Excel (2010) sheet for the analysis and interpretation of data. A bibliography of selected articles is provided.

The study found 206 research articles on the subject published in 13 leading library and information science journals of Emerald for period 2007‐2011. Further, the study found that 2009 was the most productive year with 69 articles. The study observed Online Information Review published 49 articles, and hence can be considered the core journal on the topic. Mike Thelwall from the UK was found to be the most prolific author, having authored or co‐authored five articles.

The study was based on 206 research articles published during the years 2007‐2011. The study was restricted to this period because the Web 2.0 concept was originated during 2004‐2005 and the undertaken period has sufficient published literature on the topic.

The paper provides reliable and authentic information on the subject. This is the first study on this topic.

According to Kuhn's The structure of scientific revolutions normal science makes progress under a unifying paradigm while the humanities flounder among many competing paradigms. Bibliometric reference analysis is here used to test for evidence of this dichotomy in publishing and citation patterns. 227 critical (humanities) papers (with 13,355 references) drawn randomly from exhaustive Dead Sea Scrolls bibliographies are compared with 162 archaeological (scientific) papers (2,494 references) from the same population. References in critical papers (where‐lack of paradigm unity diffuses research and impedes assimilation of individual papers) in general (with and without inclusion of ancient classics) and articles in particular (with/without) are found, as hypothesised, to have significantly higher average ages than references in the archaeological papers. Reference density ratios adjusted for changes in number of citable and citing papers suggest no decline in use with age for critical sources as is true in archaeology. Archaeological, but not critical, references cluster on a research front and are concentrated in the years of data collection. Periodicals (not less‐timely monographs) account, as hypothesised, for significantly more archaeological than critical papers, references, and references in articles only.