QUALITY OF PHYSICS INFORMATION SOURCES – WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO INDIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS
Dr. Gayatri Paul* and Dr. Swapan Deoghuria#
Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata, India
Abstract
Scientific Publishing is one of the fastest growing subsectors of the media industry. Science, technology and
medicine (STM) market is a stable and reliable field for
long-term investments. Over the last few years it is
evident that publication of STM journals is predominantly
controlled by a few commercial publishers of USA and
European Unions. With the acquisition of publications of
learned societies and universities by a small number of
large commercial publishers, very few STM journals
published by learned societies of third world countries
survived. One of the bright examples is Indian Journal of
Physics.
The present study aims to divulge the pattern of
scholarly communication of Indian Journal of Physics
from 2007 to 2012 to measure the coverage and quality of
contribution of this journal towards physics literature.
Beside the journal itself mainly the Web of Science
(WoS) online and Scopus Database online were used to
collect the initial data. The study analyze the concept like
chronological distribution of citation, distribution of
affiliating institution, geographical distribution of
contributors, description of subjects, ranking of cited
journals and is concluded with a discussion of findings.
INTRODUCTION
The advent of Internet technology has led to changes in
the way journals operate, including faster review times,
electronic submissions and tracking, and online
publications. Online access of scientific literature has
brought remarkable changes in the way the knowledge is
shared and disseminates due to its easy availability.
Indian Journal of Physics (IJP), the oldest Physics journal
published from India has been taken as a case for this
study. The journal was a brainchild of Sir C. V. Raman
who was the patron, and founder Editor-in-Chief of the
same. The journal is being published continuously from
as early as in 1926 by Indian Association for the
Cultivation of Science (IACS), a leading research institute
in basic sciences for dissemination of the original
research paper through this journal. The journal publishes
peer reviewed articles covering current research areas in
Physics in the following categories: Astrophysics,
Atmospheric and Space physics, Atomic & Molecular
Physics, Biophysics, Condensed Matter & Materials
Physics, General & Interdisciplinary Physics, Nonlinear
dynamics & Complex Systems, Nuclear Physics, Optics
and Spectroscopy, Particle Physics, Plasma Physics,
----------------------------*libgp@iacs.res.in
#ccsd@iacs.res.in
Relativity & Cosmology, Statistical Physics. Presently
IACS has signed a co-publishing agreement with the
international publisher Springer and the journal is being
published (both online and printed version), distributed
and marketed by Springer although total editorial process
is being done by IACS and copyright is with IACS.
PURPOSE
Although commercial publishing houses mainly
dominate scientific journal publishing industry still a few
journals published by learned societies/universities
perform well in the dissemination of knowledge sharing
of authentic source of scientific information. Bright
example of it is IJP. Against all odds and stiff competition
it not only survived but excelled brilliantly with steady
increase of impact factor over the last five years. It is the
only physics journal published from India with the
highest impact factor (1.857) for the year 2012. Taking
advantage of a commercial publishing house like Springer
for online publication and wide circulation through a copublishing agreement, it has now transformed from an
obscure science journal to a well known international
physics journal. Authors, editors and reviewers of the
journal are taking advantage of the use of fully webenabled online manuscript submission and review
systems of Springer.
Our interest is to find the status of Indian Journal of
Physics in the limited period of six years as a case study.
We know many factors may influence whether a paper is
cited much or little, but these cited numbers are best used
to obtain an overview of a researcher's output and overall
impact (measured as citation counts per article) of
journals in knowledge dissemination .
OBJECTIVES
The citation pattern of the research articles published in
IJP during the year 2007 to 2012 is our prime concern and
we have tried to find out the following during our study:
a) ratio of articles published and articles cited
b) year wise analysis of citation
c) affiliation pattern of the citing authors
d) subject area of the published articles
e) geographical distribution of the contributors
f) analysis of the pattern of citing journals
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
The Indian Journal of Physics, Vol.81 (2007) to Vol. 86
(2012) in both hard copy and soft copy is the primary
source of information to collect the data. For the
information on citation we consulted two international
online databases namely Web of Science (WoS) and the
Scopus Database of Elsevier's SciVerse. Besides the
Annual Report and other related publications of IACS are
the main sources of information.
METHODOLOGY
Year wise Analysis of Citation
Importance and usability of a research publication lies
with how other researchers cite that in their publications.
Table-2 shows the year wise distribution of the number of
citation of the cited articles.
The research articles published in IJP during the period
2007 to 2012 which were cited subsequently by different
authors were studied. Information regarding citation was
collected from WoS and the Scopus Database were
recorded, tabulated and analysed considering the citation
year, cited journals, affiliation of the citing authors and
subject area of citation.
Table-2: Frequency of Citation
Citation Year
2
2
2
2
2
2
T
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
o
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
t
7
8
9
0
1
2
3
a
2007
2
10
18
22
16
14
8
90
2.43
2008
-
2
25
26
13
15
9
90
2.64
2009
-
-
-
38
50
90
58
236
2.45
2010
-
-
-
3
65
385
162
615
4.21
2011
-
-
-
-
26
267
231
524
4.26
2012
-
-
-
-
-
74
239
313
2.76
Year
2
l
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Year wise Contribution of Articles and Citations
Table-1 depicts the year wise contribution of articles. It
is found that the highest numbers of articles (204) were
published in the year 2011; while the least number of
articles (106) were brought out in the year 2007. From the
table it is clear that papers published in the year 2010
were cited more (146, 78.91%) during 2010 to March
2013 and papers published in the year 2008 got least
citation (34, 26.35%) during the consecutive years 2008
to March, 2013. It is evident that from 2010 onwards the
journal is more visible to scientific community and as a
result cited more.
Table-1: Ratio of Articles Published and Cited
Year
Articles
Published
Articles
Cited
Percentage
2007
106
37
34.90
2008
129
34
26.35
2009
161
96
59.62
2010
185
146
78.91
2011
204
123
60.29
2012
170
113
66.47
Avg
citation
per
article
Above table shows a remarkable growth of average
citation per article from the year 2010 onwards.
Affiliation Pattern of the Citing Authors
Affiliating institution of the citing authors are
categorised as colleges including engineering and medical
colleges, universities, research organisation including
IITs, IISc etc. and others include schools, industries,
consortium etc.Table-3 gives the data regarding affiliation
pattern of the citing authors.
Table-3: Organisation wise Citation of Articles
Article Publishing Year
Inst.
2007 (%)
2008 (%)
2009 (%)
2010 (%)
2011 (%)
2012 (%)
Colleges
60 (20.48)
62 (18.96)
89 (19.26)
132 (22.53)
85 (11.97)
97 (19.06)
Univ.
156 (53.23)
172 (52.60)
203 (43.94)
271 (46.24)
348 (49.02)
269 (52.85)
Res Org.
73 (24.92)
91 (27.83)
169 (36.58)
181 (30.89)
276 (38.87)
142 (27.90)
Others
4 (1.37)
2 (0.61)
1 (0.22 )
2 (0.34)
1 (0.14)
1 (0.19)
Total
293
327
462
586
710
509
.
Above table shows that authors from universities cite
most followed by research institutes and colleges.
Subject Area of the Published Articles
The subjects of the published articles are categorised as
mentioned in the Indian Journal of Physics.
Table-4: Distribution of subjects
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Total
Astrophysics, Atmospheric & Space Physics
12
7
6
18
5
11
59
Atomic & Molecular Physics
17
3
7
17
15
7
66
Biophysics
3
0
0
0
0
0
3
Condensed Matter & Materials Physics
39
88
48
54
23
57
309
Nuclear Physics
9
1
56
41
114
14
235
Optics & Spectroscopy
4
5
4
17
11
9
50
General & Interdisciplinary Physics
14
7
28
23
24
37
133
Nonlinear Dynamics & Complex Systems
1
2
1
1
0
7
12
Particle Physics
6
12
9
1
2
8
38
Plasma Physics
0
2
2
4
10
15
33
Relativity & Cosmology
1
0
0
0
0
4
5
Statistical Physics
0
2
0
9
0
1
12
106
129
161
185
204
170
955
2009
2010
2011
2012
Total
Table-5: Geographical Distribution of Contributors
2008
Above table shows that major contributions are in the
field of condensed matter & materials physics followed
by nuclear physics and general & interdisciplinary
physics. The least contribution is in the field of
biophysics as there is no contribution in this field during
2008 to 2012 followed by relativity & cosmology.
2007
Total
Continents
Subjects
Africa
0
0
0
8
8
12
28
291
321
442
430
501
463
2448
Australia
0
0
0
0
0
2
2
Europe
1
4
13
120
154
19
311
North
America
1
2
7
28
47
13
98
Total
293
327
462
586
710
509
2887
Geographical Coverage of Contributions
The geographical distribution of contributions is
presented in table-5. It is found that the authors are
geographically scattered over all the continents of the
world. Out of total 2887 contributors, Asia contributed
the highest number of articles i.e. 2448 contributing
84.79% of the total contribution. The overall analysis
indicates that IJP has set due consideration for the quality
of production of articles with respect to the technological
trends of both developed and developing countries of
various parts of the globe.
Asia
From the above table we found contributions from
almost all countries which establish its status of true
international journal. We noticed that from 2010 onwards
the contributions from outside India increased
remarkably. Major contributing countries are China (143),
USA (82), Germany (75), Iran (73), Egypt (55), Italy
(54), Russia (50), Turkey (46) etc.
Origin of Cited Journals
Journals in which articles of IJP were cited is
categorised as national and international journals. Table-6
provides the number of citation made in national and
international journals.
Table-6: Distribution of Cited Journals
Origin
National
International
Total
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Total
17
35
109
529
501
342
1533
63
52
128
86
67
41
437
80
87
237
615
568
383
1970
We have noticed that almost all physics journals (total
147) cite articles published in IJP. Notable among them
are Physical Review (A, B, C, D), Advances in High
Energy Physics, Applied Optics, Astronomy and
Astrophysics, Canadian Journal of Physics, Chinese
Journal of Physics, Euro Physics Letters, Journal of
American Chemical Society, Journal of Chemical
Physics, Nanomaterials Nanotechnology, Physics Letters,
Thin Solid Film, Journal of Physical Chemistry, Indian
Journal of Pure and Applied Physics etc. Table 6 shows
that Journals published from India cite more than journals
published from abroad during 2007 to 2012.
CONCLUSIONS
From this study we found that a true turn around for
Indian Journal of Physics has happened from 2010
onwards. It has been possible due to fruitful collaboration
with Springer, a leading publishing house through a copublishing agreement in 2009. Taking advantage of
online publishing, good marketing, efficient editorial
process and speedy decision it has become one of the
most popular physics journal. Contributions from all over
the world and articles cited by all leading physics journals
make it a true international journal.
REFERENCES
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bibliometric analysis of the rate of citation and their
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[4] http://apps.webofscience.com
[5] http://www.iacs.res.in/ijp
[6] http://link.springer.com/journal/12648
[7] http://www.scopus.com/home.url