Contributions in the NISCAIR’s Annals of Library and Information Studies: A Five-Year Bibliometric Study

The present study aims to investigate the bibliometric analysis of 139 articles appearing in Annals of Library and Information Studies journal five years of period between 2016 and 2020. The highest number of contributions i.e., 32 (23.022 %) were published in the year 2016 and 2017. It was found that the most of the contributions are by two authored i.e., 96 (56.61%). It was also noted that out of 139 articles single author contributed only 38 (13.97%) articles while the rest 5 (1.83%) articles were contributed by joint authors. The degree of collaboration ranges from 0.28 to 0.12 and the average degree of collaboration is 0.09. The total average number of authors per paper is 9.76 and the average productivity per author is 2.53 during the period under the study.


INTRODUCTION
Annals of Library and Information Studies earlier published as Annals of Library Science and Documentation is a well-known leading journal in the field of library and information science published from India.It is a leading quarterly journal, published by the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), New Delhi.NISCAIR is publishing original papers, survey reports, reviews, short communications, and letters pertaining to library science, information science and computer applications in these fields.The journal's title was expanded to Annals of Library Science and Documentation in 1964 and again renamed in 2001 as Annals of Library and Information Studies.

RELATED STUDIES
Desai (2014) presents bibliometric analysis of DJLIT during 2012.The analysis covers various parameters like issue-wise distribution of papers, subject-wise distribution, authorship pattern, reference sources, length of the papers, special issues, institute-wise distribution, country-wise distribution, major contributors, research method / type & average number of references per paper, etc.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 1)
To identify the year-wise contributions for a period of study.
2) To study the authorship pattern of the contributions.
3) To study the trends in research and identifying the growth of literature.4) To identify authorship trends in documents on various subjects.5) To examine the author's productivity.6) To examine the chronological distribution, authorship pattern, gender-wise distribution and geographical affiliation of contributors.7) To study the citation pattern of contributions.8) To study the distribution of citations (volume-wise).9) To study single authored vs multi-authored papers.10) To find out the author's degree of collaborations.

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS
Annals of Library and Information Studies is selected for Bibliometric analysis, because the journal has grown in status and set its own standards in professional journalism.It is a national periodical completely dedicated to the field of library and information science serving the professional community by publishing papers on diverse library techniques and library systems duly encouraging the authors both young and old around the globe.It was interesting to analyse the Bibliometric of such a leading journal in the field so as to know the ranking of authors, types of documents, geographical location of publications, citation-wise distribution, year-wise distribution, Page number-wise distribution, country-wise ranking etc.Data were collected from the issues of 5 years, i.e., from 2016 to 2020.Rest of the issues were not considered for collection of data.

METHODOLOGY
Five volumes (Vol 63 to 67) containing 20 issues of "Annals of Library and Information Studies" published during the year 2016 to 2020 have been taken up for evaluation.The details with regards to each published article such as number of articles in each issue of the journal, number of authors, name of authors, place of authors, number of references and their forms, number of pages, etc., were recorded and analysed for making observations.The data were collected; organised and analysed using MS-Excel spreadsheets.The tables and graphs were generated in accordance with the objectives of the study.The said volume of the journal was studied in order to ascertain number of articles.Further each article was studied in detail as to ascertain number of chronological distribution of articles, number of pages, authorship pattern, degree of collaboration, institution-wise contribution and geographical distribution of articles were recorded and analysed for making observations.2 indicates that majority of authors preferred to publish their articles in two authorship mode (156 authors) followed by individual authorship mode (38 authors) and three authorship mode (51 authors) while, articles published by more than three authors (29 authors) were quite negligible.4 shows volume-wise authorship pattern of articles.Highest number of articles are published by two authors, i.e., 154 authors (56.61%), least number of articles published by five authors, i.e., 5 articles (1.83%), and average number of articles published by one author, i.e., 38 articles (13.97%).5 and Figure 5 presents data related to author productivity, which shows that the total average number of authors per paper is 9.76.The average productivity per author is 2.53 during the period under study.7 shows that, the degree of collaboration among two author publications.0.28 was highest and least was 0.12.In three authors collaboration, 0.09 highest and least was 0.03.It is noted that 0.28 was highest among the collaboration in different category of authors.Note: (a) Each volume consist of 4 issues (5x4=20 issues) (b) D C = Degree of Collaboration

RECOMMENDATION FOR FURTHER STUDY
The researcher made a few recommendations for further research.They are: 1. Considered only one journal for this study, i.e., Annals of Library and Information Studies.Similar studies shall be extended to other journals.2.More than one journal shall be considered which helps in comparative analysis of the study results.3.For the present study, considered only 5 years data, i.e., 2016 to 2020.Further study may be conducted using more number of years.

CONCLUSION
Bibliometrics is an important field of information science as it represents a unique set of techniques for monitoring and analysis of information resources and for management of knowledge in social and organisational contexts.Bibliometric methods are used in studies of properties and behaviour of recorded knowledge, for analysis of structures of scientific and research areas, and for evaluation of research activity and administration of scientific information.Various statistical methods are applied to study or measure, authorship, citation and publication pattern, and relationship within scientific domains and research communities and to structure of specific fields.In this sense, bibliometrics is also relevant for researchers, policy and decision makers and also researchers outside the library and information science.Moreover, bibliometrics studies should be encouraged to evaluate research performance of a particular field of research in a country.Even national science policy can be decided on the basis of bibliometrics/scientometrics study.It is expected that more and more subject experts would take keen interest in this area of study.
For the purpose the analysis, in addition to collection of research articles through internet, main sources for data was from worldwide recognised databases, such as, Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, NISCAIR, Research Gate, etc.Although there were lot of inconveniences faced during the pandemic of COVID-19, the researcher got excellent experience to carry-out the work with limited opportunities.As a result, in the present study, it is evident that the set objectives have been achieved to the fullest satisfaction of the researcher.

Agarwal ( 2015 )
study aims to explore the impact of open access on CSIR-NISCAIR journals in terms of visibility, use, citations received and impact factor.The results point out that switching to open access has benefited the journals.Garg (2016) gives about editorial gatekeeping in journals published by CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (CSIR-NISCAIR) in terms of their distribution by locations, affiliations and by gender.The study observes that the editorial board members are located at places which • Email: editor@ijfmr.comIJFMR23057591 Volume 5, Issue 5, September-October 2023 2 are centers of Indian science and are affiliated to most prestigious and prolific institutes of India and abroad.However, the representation of women as board members is low and requires to be raised.Santosh (2017) aims to explore the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies among the library professionals in academic libraries in India.Data was collected through a structured questionnaire mailed to respondents from 46 central university libraries in India.The findings suggest that there exists a fair level of awareness and familiarity with the Web 2.0 tools and technologies among the library professionals.The study provides useful insights to promote the use of Web 2.0 tools among the library professionals in Indian libraries.Sen (2018) Provides a bibliography of publications on bibliometrics and related subjects published in India as well as generated from India and published abroad during 1958 to 1994.Awasthi & Tripathi (2021) explains the literature and dwells upon the reasons behind the occurrences of plagiarism.It reiterates that the anti-plagiarism software are automated programs and should be used in conjunction with human intelligence and detailed human scrutiny.The authors high lights the advantages and disadvantages of using the anti-plagiarism software and recommend that training sessions and orientation programs be organized for the students and researchers to sensitize them to the basic principle of honesty in academic and research enterprise, impacting all the stakeholders.

Figure 5 :
Figure 5: Author Productivity Table5and Figure5presents data related to author productivity, which shows that the total average number of authors per paper is 9.76.The average productivity per author is 2.53 during the period under study.

Figure 6 :
Figure 6: Country-wise Distribution of Contributions
and Figure 1 shows the year-wise distribution of articles.Total number of articles published during the year 2016-2020 is 139 articles.Highest number of articles published during the years 2016 and 2017, i.e., 32 articles (23.02%).Least number of articles published during the year 2019, I.e., 20 articles(

Table 2 and
Figure

Table 3
and figure 3 shows publication-wise distribution.Highest number of articles published during 2016 and 2017 (32 articles).Least number of articles published during 2019 (20 articles).Average number of articles published during 2018 & 2020 (28 &27 articles).

Table 6 and
Figure 6 revels that out of the total 272 contributors, majority, i.e., 204 (75.0%) of articles have been published by Indian contributors.And remaining articles has been contributed by the other country contributors.

Table 7 and
Figure