The Journal of Oilseeds Research, published by the Indian Society of Oilseeds Research, has played a key role in the dissemination of oilseeds information in India. Describes a citation analysis of the references covered in the journal for the period 1984-1993. Authorship patterns and collaboration coefficients are reported and a list of ten core periodicals for oilseeds research is identified based on the citation analysis

Damodaram, T.

Devarai, Rajashekhar S.

English

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Growth of research in oilseeds and collaboration trends: A case study

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Library Science. 32; 1995. Paper UGI~ow"rH OF RESEARCH IN OILSEEDS ANDCOLLABORATION TRENDS: A CASE STUDYT. DAMODARAM* and RAJASHEKIIAR S. DEVAI{AI+Directorate of Oilseeds Research, Rajendranaj?ar, Hyderabad .5000.10, Andhra Prade.\'/r, INDIA.The paper discusses the results of an inrormctrics study of the issues of the Journal of OilscedsRcscarch published during 1984-1993. It cmph:lsizcs on the key role played by the Indi:lnSociety of Oilsceds Rcscarch and its journal in the dissemination of oilsccds information inIndia. 'A list of ten core periodicals of oilsecds research were identiCicd based on the citc1tionanalysis of the journal. Authorship pattern alld collalJOr:ltion coefricicnl" wcre studied :lndreported.KEY WORDS/DESCI~IPTOI~S: Oilseeds; Coll:lhor1llion trends; Core Periodicals.nlustnrd (£3lI:lratpur) ~Ind in ~ldditi()n three 1\11India Coordin~lted Rese~lrch Projects on ground-nut with 22 research centres, soybean with 14rl~se:lrch celltrl~S and rapcsl~l~d-mustard with 20research centres. 'Joe c()re rese~lrch ~Ictivity (IIIannual oilsecds in India has been concentrated inthe said AICORPO network during the last twentyfive ye~lrs.INTRODUCTION1An organi.')'ed research eff()rt ()n anllu;ll ()ilsl~c(lsstarted with tIle estahlishmcnt ()f All IndiaCo-ordinated Research Project on Oilseeds(AICORPO) in 1967 covering five crops viz.,groundnut, rapeseed-mustard, sesame, linseedand castor involvil1g 32 research cel1tres il1 JII(Jia.This network presently consists of 47 researchcentres spread over 17 different states coveringsix crops viz., sesame, niger, sunflower, saf-flower, castor and linseed with a Directorate ofOilseeds Research, at Hyderabad backed up byfive project coordinating units one for eacl1 of theprincipal crops. Besides tl1ere ~Ire three Illiti()llalresearch centres, one each for groundnut(Junagadh), soybean (Indore) and rapeseed-The research information on oilseeds generlltedin the AICORPO system is being disseminlltedthrough a variety of media, and periodicals formone of the most important channels of commu-nication for disseminating nascent micro infor-Il1ati()ll 011 oils(~eds. Quite a number of periodi-cals publish research articles and research noteson oilseeds.+ A.\"sistant LibrarUlnDocumentlltion-cum-lnformatio/f Officer172Damodaram and DevaraiThe Journal of Oiiseeds Research published byIndian Society of Oilseeds Research with amembership of around six hundred was selectedfor analysis. Journal of Oilseeds Research dis-seminates research information on oilseeds in thecountry. Contributions from the members on anyaspect of oilseeds research are considered forpublication in Journal of Oilseeds Research.papers published in a field during a certain periodof time r41This can be expressed as:Collaborative Coefficient (CC) NmNm +NsWhere Nm is the multi-aulhored research papersin the disciplin~/field published during a year.Only two or more thanr two authors wereconsidered multi-authored papers for analysis.Ns is the single-authored research papers in adiscipline/field published during the sameperiod.Most of the oilseed research workers contributeto this journal. This is considered as the onlycomprehensive periodical on oilseeds research inlridia. Articles from this periodical are beingregularly indexed and abstracted in AGRINDEX,abstracting periodicals of CABI and BiologicalAbstracts. An attempt was made to indentifycore periodicals in Oilseeds Research based oncitation analysis of the references covered in thejournal for the period 1984-t990. Authorshippatterns and collaboration trends are alsojfeported. Similar studies were conducted fromtime to time by informetricians [3,2].The average authorship per paper (AAP) wasworked out using the following formula [1]:AAP = ~P:Where Ai is the number of authors contributingto the ith category (i = 1, 2, 3, 4) and Pi is thetot:l! number of papers in the ith category.METHODOLOGYThe data on numher of times ~I p~lrticularil)eriodical title cited in references c(}vered in tll(~tournaI of Oilseeds l~esearch during 1984-1990were recorded. ~ total of 1195 references fromdifferent periodic~lls were cited ill ~Irticlesl'Iuhlished in Journal of Oilst~eus 1~(~se~lr(~II.ISubsequently 572 articles puhlished in theIJournal of Oilseed Rese3rch during 1984-1993Iwere also subjected to bibliometric analysis. Thenecessary bibliographic elements of each of thecontribution were recorded and required analysiswas carried out. N~lmes of auth(}rs, number ofl authors, year of publication and discipline ofp,ach of the contributions were noted. Yearwise,Icropwise and d1sciplinewise tot~11 number ofIcontributions and also authorship distributioniwere noted. Collaborative coefficient in!discipline and in crops was worked out. TIle'degree of collaboration in a discipline wasdefined as the ratio of the number of collaborativeresearch papers to the total number of resear(::h:\ R(~SULTS AND DISCUSSIONThe analysis for identifying core periodicals inoilseeds research resulted in the observation that6() percent ()f the references cited in Journal ofOilseeds Research were published in top tenperiodicals as listed in Table 1.It was found that around 62% of the total numberof papers published in Journal of OilseedsRcse~lrch during the decade were on groundnut(26%) followed by rapeseed-mustard (24%) andsunflower (12%). Incidentally, sixty percent ofthe total production of oilseeds kitty in thecountry is contributed by these three cropsindicating fruitfulness of the research carried outon these crops. The total number of authors whol~ontributed during the decade (1984-1993) were1501. The number of authors who contributed indifferent crops are given in Table 2.Research in oilseeds and collaboration trend.\'Table 1COI"e periodicals of oilseeds reseal"ChNanle or l'eri..dicRI~19311~)Q1941196119561971198419141939195113695938780,484744414011887744433---I. Indian Journal or Agricullural Sciences2. Agronomy Journ...13. Indian Journal or (jenetics and Plant Breeding4. Crop Science5. Indian Journal or Agronomy6. Oilseeds Journal (publication discontinued)7. Journal orOilseeds Research8. Madras Agricullural Journal9. Indian Journal or Entomology10. Indian Farming3. Mangala Rai. All the three authors belong 10Genetics arId Plant Brcedirlg discipline.The average collaboration coefficient during theperiod 1984-1993 in different oilseed crops andin various disciplines worked out to 0.86 indicat-ing healthy trend of collaborative ~esearch inoilseeds (Table 2). Among various disciplines,Agronomy had the highest average collaborativecoefficient followed by Plant Breeding/Genetics,Physoilogy/Oil chemistry, Plant Pathology andEntomology. Similar trends were observed inaverage authorship per paper where the averagenumber of collaborators was found 3 in alldisciplines and in all years. Highest collab<)-ration was noticed in Plant Breeding/Geneticsfollowed by Agronomy, Plant Pathology andEntomology as given in Table 3.69 71 218 0.97Sunnower 22245 47 123 0.9536 38 96 0.9429 0.79SesameSoybeanCastor 6 23 66Linseed 3 25 28 76760.892719195310221690.810.840.47433SSafflowerNigerGeneraloilseedsMinoroilseeds0 8 8 23 1.00 Though an active collaborative research wasobserved in various disciplines in terms ofaverage authorship per paper, it can not beconcluded that research collaboration has beenstrictly interdisciplinary in nature. Observationof the contributors indicates that most of thecontributors might belong to the same disciplinein which they have contributed and it could onlybe treated as of shared authorship. Further, inCollaborative CoefficientThe first three prolific authors who havecontributed to oilseeds research in terms ofauthorship are: 1. T.P. Yadava, 2. Hari Singh, andl74Oamodaram and OevaraiTable 3Range orcollal)()rative coefficient during 1984-1993 in different disciplines oroilse~dsDiscipline Total no. orpape~Total no.ofauthorsCollaborativecoefficient(CC)0.91Averageauthor perpaper-59319 202 221 3.68152681118184344203204952553471251270.920.900.870.843.723.353.553.44Plant Bre~ing/GeneticsAgronomyPhysiologylOil ChemistryPlant PathologyEnlomology5. The journal may include current litera-ture on oilseeds research and develop-ment preferably with abstracts to keepabreast of oilseed research workers withlatest developments in oilseeds. Thisexercise needs a collaborative effort onthe part of the Indian Society of OilseedsResearch with an active documentationcentre in the area of oilseeds. The Societymay explore the possibility of coope-rative documentation of oilseeds researchand development literature with the helpof specialists in documentation and infor-mation for generating current awarenessupdates ()n oilsecds for publishing in thejourn~ll.many contributions it is presumed th:lt therecould be 'shadow authorship' that is to say 'as-signing authorship without significant contribu-tion to the published articles. It is very difficultto establish the element of 'Shadow authorship'in cases of multi-authored contributions. Areasonable solution to eliminate this 'shadowelement~ would go a long way to draw realisticconclusions in bibliometric analysis of publica-tions. Inter-disciplinary collaborative research isdesirable in any scientific activity for increas- ingscientific productivity and oilseeds research is noexception to this and further confirnlative studiesare necessary in this direction.Further, in view ()f tile vit:11 rl)le tll:lltllc J()llrll:11of Oilseeds Research has assumed ,among theoilseeds research workers world over, thefollowing suggestions are offered towardsfurther improvement of the journal.412.2.3. 3.4.Book reviews & Letters to tl1e Editorsmay be made as a regular feature.A comprehensive news package on Oil-seeds Research & Development Scenariomay be initiated.In view of the fact that the Journal of Oil-seeds Research is the only researchjournal in India on oilseeds, it is desirablethat the frequency of the journal may bemade either quarterly or monthly.A comprehensive author and subjectind~~ to the volun1es of Journal of Oil-seeds Research may be publisl1ed.4.I"'REFERENCESKAL Y ANE (VL) and VlDY ASAGAR RAO (K).Collaboration trends in sugarcane research - A casestudy. Anna/.\" of Library Science and Documen-tation. Vol. 38(4); 1991; p9-11.PATIL (MY). Communication pattern in theJournal of the Indian Society of Soil Science: Aquantitative analysis. Library Science with a slantto Documentation. Vol. 22(4); 1985 p230- 36.SUBRAMANIAN (R) and NA V ANEE11JAN (R).Library Science with a slant to Documentation andInformation Studies, 1981-1990: A bibliometricstudy. Library Science with a slant to Documen-tation and Information Studies. Vol. 29(3); 1992;p157-61.SUBRAMANY AM (K). Bibliometric studies ofresearch collaboration. A review. Journal ofInformation Science. Vol. 6(1); 1983; p33-8.32: No.4 SEPTEMBER 1995 75

Bibliometric studies of research collaboration. A review.

Collaboration trends in sugarcane research - A case study.

Communication pattern in the Journal of the Indian Society of Soil Science: A quantitative analysis. Library Science with a slant to Documentation.

Library Science with a slant to Documentation and Information Studies, 1981-1990: A bibliometric study. Library Science with a slant to Documentation and Information Studies.

Growth of research in oilseeds and collaboration trends: A case study

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