B. K. Sen

Symbols and Formulas for a Few Bibliometric Concepts.

Symbols for concepts like ‘half life’, ‘impact factor’, ‘normalised impact factor’ and ‘immediacy index’ are proposed and formulas for the determination of their values are provided. The features of the concepts are also highlighted.

Information retrieval features in Indian digital libraries: a critical appraisal

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the present situation in the development of indigenous digital libraries in India. The study aims to evaluate different retrieval features of Indian digital libraries, especially those provide access to multilingual and multimedia documents.Design/methodology/approach – For this study, eight digital libraries originated in India, which are available in 24×7 timeframe and accessible worldwide through the internet, have been identified and selected. The retrieval features and other information on these digital libraries have been collected mostly from their respective websites and from other published literature, annual reports, etc.Findings – The paper finds that Indian digital libraries provide universal access to informative and culturally rich digital content related to South Asian region. The digitisation efforts in Indian institutions make these digital libraries operational.Research limitations/implications – The institutional repositories and open acc...

Ranking of scientists – a new approach

A formula for the ranking of scientists based on diachronous citation counts is proposed. The paper generalises the fact that the citation generation potential (CGP) is not the same for all papers, it differs from paper to paper, and also to a certain extent depends on the subject domain of the papers. The method of ranking proposed in no way replaces peer review. It merely acts as an aid for peers to help them arrive at a better judgement.

The Effect of Facebook Adoption in an Academic Library

The postings in library‘s Facebook page were gleaned and analyzed. Data of important metrics of Facebook post usage were taken from ‗Facebook Insight‘ metrics of Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women Library‘s Facebook page. Alongside, library usage data were used to understand the change in behaviour of library usage. The findings provide further support to the view that social network sites (i.e., Facebook) have the potential to be a cost-effective means of engaging users effectively irrespective of the size of the academic library. It is also found that collaboration and communication through Facebook were far more effective than traditional approaches. Since only the experience of a single institution is considered, it cannot be generalized that Facebook will be effective in every institutional context. However, the result provides a basis for academic libraries to consider experimenting with Facebook and its page to understand its effectiveness. This paper provides evidence that such initiatives can provide a measurable impact of Facebook as an outreach tool with minimal efforts.

Eugene Garfield-Glimpses of his writings

Garfield in his active life used to contribute one article every week which appeared in Current Contents and some renowned journals. The articles thus contributed total around 1500. All these articles had finally appeared in the book called Essays of an Information Scientist in 15 volumes. The present article is based on the first five volumes of his Essays wherein the articles by Garfield have been initially grouped under broad subject headings like Awards, Bibliometric studies, Highly cited articles, etc and then a very brief description has been provided.

Biobibliometric Study of Professor A. S. Paintal: A Celebrated Medical Physiologist

Prof. A. S. Paintal, is recognized as a towering figure in the field of cardio-respiratory sensory physiology. His 129 publications appeared during 1952–2005 were analyzed to find out year-wise distribution of papers, research team of the scientist and scattering of papers in different communication channels. This study also finds author productivity, spectrum of research activities and productivity of Paintals research team. Most of the papers of the scientist (N= 86) are noncollaborative. Paintals first paper was published in1952 at the age of 26. The period 1971–1980, when Paintal was 46–55 years old, was his most productive period (3 papers per year). In the byline of authors his status ranged from first author to sixth author. Paintals research team comprised 28 collaborators. Asima Anand was the most productive collaborator of the scientist. Most of his papers were published in international journals, and Journal of Physiology (London) was the most preferred journal. Finally, it is seen that the data set does not follow Bradford Law.

Matrimonial (Socio-Economic) Choice and Bradford's Law: A Study

Marriage acts as foundation of society through social and legal union of men and women. In social marriage socioeconomic choice plays a pivotal role. Among many other sources of disseminating information about marriage matrimonial advertisements in newspapers serves as information sharing communication process in social marriage. In this study socioeconomic choice of 600 each of bride and bridegroom in matrimonial advertisements in two leading Bengali newspapers (Anandabazar Patrika and Bartaman Patrika) were analyzed to check whether the data follow Bradford law of scattering. It is observed from the study that socioeconomic choice of both bride and bridegroom strictly follows Bradford law in the first and second zones but marginally deviates in the third zone. This study may open up new vistas of sociological research in the form of sociobibliometrics.

Biobibliometric study on Dr. Sambhu Nath De-A pioneer in cholera research

Sambhu Nath De, a medical scientist, is recognized as a pioneer in cholera research. His publications were analyzed to find out year-wise distribution of papers, research team of the scientist and scattering of papers in different communication channels. This study also finds author productivity, spectrum of research activities and productivity of Des research team. The result shows that Des first paper was published in1944 at the age of 30. The period 1951–54, when De was 37–40 years old, was his most productive period (3 papers per year). His status was as first author, second author and third author. Most of his papers were published in international journals.