Introduction
India invests a huge amount of money and time for the production of doctorates to meet its R&D needs. Evaluation of research institutions is very important for their ranking, proper funding, grant releasing etc. Very few studies have been made to compare and evaluate the research output of the universities and R&D organizations of West Bengal. In recent past NAAC started evaluation of overall activities of the universities of our country. In a 5 to 1 star ranking by NAAC, The University of Burdwan received four-star status, which is later revised to B+. The University of Burdwan was established in 1960 as a rural base university. Since then it has made a considerable contribution in the field of Biological sciences research.
However, no specific effort has been made to evaluate the research contributions of the university. In the present work an attempt is be made to study the comparative research performance of Botany and Zoology department of The University of Burdwan by analysing the awarded theses and related published literature outputs. Literature Review
A number of scientometric analyses have been carried out during the last two decades to evaluate the research productivity of Indian scientists.
In a study of the literature use pattern by the researchers in the field of Botany: A citation study of doctoral theses, Maheswarappa and Prakash (1982) analysed 2726 references from fifteen doctoral theses in Botany accepted by Mysore University during 1973-1980. They found out the bibliographic forms used, ranked list of core journals, self citation pattern, obsolesence, etc. The average self-citation rate was 3.22%.
Mahapatra (1983) in his thesis prepared a rank list of botany journals analyzing 17802 journal articles. Maheswarappa and Nagappa (1984) studied the Indian phytopathology literature. After analysing 20 dissertations of plant pathology of Rajendra Agricultural University. Lal and Panda (1996) created a ranked list of the 100 most frequently cited core periodicals.
Lal (1993) reported the results of a bibliometric analysis of 4136 citations of articles published in the Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding and prepared a rank list of the 60 most cited primary periodicals. He has also illustrated the contribution of Indian and foreign theses and the authorship pattern revealing that multi authored papers were more in practice.
Begum and Rajendra (1990) in their study observed the dominance of multiple authorship over single authorship in zoological sciences.
Vimala and Pulla Reddy (1996) studied the trend in authorship pattern and collaborative research in zoology with a sample of 19,323 journal citations figured in the theses on zoology accepted for the award of the doctoral degree by Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India.
Kumar, S., Kumar, S., and Shah, G (2007) analysed 1429 research papers comprising 1117 articles and 312 short notes published in fifteen volumes, published for the year 1989-2003 in Indian Journal of Entomology. They analysed year wise distribution, length of articles, authorship pattern and calculates collaboration coefficients and most prolific contributors. Objectives
The objectives of the present study are:
1. To analyse and compare the trend of doctoral research in Botany and Zoology department in the University of Burdwan during 1960-2000.
2. To find out and compare year wise publication productivity in Botany and Zoology department.
3. To study and compare the pattern of authorship collaboration in Botany and Zoology department.
4. To identify and compare the most prolific authors of the Botany and Zoology department with their credit and Impact.
5. The citation scenario of the outstanding authors of Botany and Zoology department.
6. To identify and compare the journal preference of the researchers in which they have communicated their research findings.
7. To find out the country wise distribution of journals. Methodology
There were 160 no. of Botany and 236 no. of Zoology doctoral dissertations awarded from the department of Botany and Zoology of this University from 1960 to 2000. The published articles appended in these theses and the articles reported in the Annual Reports of the University were taken as the input for the study.
All the bibliographic details of those theses and related articles were noted on separate 8 X 5 inches slips. A computerized database is then created for in-depth analysis
