Bibliometric Analysis of Indian Journal of Chemistry, Section B to Study the Usage Pattern of Information in the Field of Material Science (original) (raw)

2016, Library Philosophy and Practice

1. IntroductionBibliometrics is a relatively new branch of information science and has now become a standard tool of science policy and research management in the last decades. Pritchard explained the term bibliometrics as "the application of mathematical and statistical methods to books and other media of communication" (Pritchcard,1969). Communication media comprises of books, papers in serials, periodicals, monographs, reports , thesis, e-books and e-journals. Regarding the scope of bibliometrics, O'Connor and Voos (1981) states that "its scope includes the study of the relationship among documents e.g. citation studies or describing a literature. Typically, these descriptions f ocus on consistent patterns involving authors, monographs, journals or subject/language". The backbone of bibliometrics lies on some theoretical foundation, laid by some pioneers, such as, Lotka, Gro ss, Bradford, Zipf, Derek J de Solla Price, Bookstein, Mandelbrot, Brookes, Narin,...