1. Introduction

Scientometrics studies have been applied mainly to scientific fields and empirical investigation of publications in specific scientific fields and subfields. It examines quantitative aspects of science, science of science, and scientific communication. This type of analysis provides useful indicators of scientific productivity and trends in the particular field. The term scientometric was coined in Russia by Nalimov. Since Nalimov's coinage of the Russian equivalent of the term 'Scientometrics' (naukometriya) in 1969, this term has grown in popularity and is used to describe the study of science: growth, structure, interrelationships and productivity (Hood & Wilson [1]). According to Haiturn [2] "Scientometric" is a scientific discipline which performs reproducible measurement of scientific activity and reveals it objective quantitative regularities. Hence, scientometric studies aims to integrate the cognitive or intellectual structure of research with a view to appraise the relations among the authors, institutions, journal articles and as a means of assisting the peer-review procedure. The main purpose of the scientometric studies is to determine the state and prospect of a subject and its future development. The present study aims to apply the scientometric technique to know the publication trends in the Indian Journal of Chemical Technology.

2. Review of Literature

Numbers of scientometric analysis studies have been conducted through the world. Out of them, two studies results are presented briefly. Padme and Vaishali [3] conducted a bibliometric analysis of 'Indian Journal of Chemistry- Section A'. The Indian Journal of Chemistry-Section A published 482 research papers during the period of study i.e. from 2010 to 2014. The journal has published on an average of 96 research papers per year. The Double authors contributed the maximum numbers of papers 119 (24.69%). The 653 contributors from 36 countries, India stands first place with the 66.76 percent of contributions and among Indian state wise distribution of the contributors, West Bengal stand first place with 71(16.28%) contributions. Nattur [4] analysis of 829 articles published in the Indian Journal of Physics during the year from 2004 to 2008 reveals that maximum number of articles published in the year 2004. The important note of the study is that the majority of the articles are contributed by multiple authors and majority of the authors were affiliated to Universities. Ninety-two percent of the contributors were belonged to India and eight per cent belonged to other countries. Among the India, contributors belonged to Karnataka dominated the other states in India.

3. The Source Journal

National Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR) [5] came into existence on 30 September 2002 with the merger of National Institute of Science Communication (NISCOM) and Indian National Scientific Documentation Centre (INSDOC). Both NISCOM and INSDOC, the two premier institutes of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), were devoted to dissemination and documentation of science and technology information. Now, with the formation of NISCAIR, an institute capable of serving the society using modern IT infrastructure in a more effective manner and taking up new ventures in the field of science communication, dissemination and science and technology information management systems and services. Broadly the core activity of NISCAIR will be to collect/store, publish and disseminate science and technology information through a mix of traditional and modern means, which will benefit different segments of society. All publications of the Niscair publications are freely available in its web site and mobile app designed by Niscair. NISCAIR has been publishing 18 research journals in field of science and technology. The Indian Journal of Chemical Technology is one of the research publications in chemical technology. This bimonthly journal included novel and original research finding as well as reviews in the areas of Chemical Engineering, Catalysis, Leather Processing, Polymerization, Membrane Separation, Pharmaceuticals and Drugs, Agrochemicals, Reaction Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, Petroleum Technology, Corrosion and Metallurgy and Applied Chemistry. It's published in the month of January, March, May, July, September and November every year. Impact factor of IJCT is 0.348 (JCR 2017).

4. Objectives of the study

The main objective of the present paper is to examine the publication trends in the field of chemical engineering and technology. The other objectives are as follows:

* To find out the year wise distribution of papers

* To identify the authorship pattern

* To find out the collaborative pattern in the field of the chemical engineering and technology

* To determine the geographical wise distributions of papers

* To know the year wise distribution of references appended with the papers.

5. Methodology

The present scientometric study conducted for the purpose to know the publication trends in the field of chemical engineering and technology. The study analyses in detail, the bibliographic attributes of the papers and reference appended at the end of each papers in the Indian journal of chemical technology. Data collected from the journal's web site (http://www.niscair.res.in/sciencecommunication/researchiournals/reiour/iict/iictQ.asp). Six hundred and forty sixty papers from ten volumes of the years from 2008 to 2017 have been taken for consideration of the present study. The information about the year wise distribution of research papers, single and multi author's contributions, and nativity pertains to authors and reference appended to papers were collected. The collected data are organized, tabulated and calculated by using simple statistical methods with the help of MS - Excel. Apart from the general statistical analysis, some of the important bibliometric indicators like Degree of Collaboration (DC), Collaborative Index (CI), Collaborative Coefficient (CC), Relative Growth Rate (RGR) and Doubling Time (DT) are calculated and described in the following paragraphs.

6. Data Analysis and Interpretation

6.1. Year and Issue -Wise Distribution of the Papers

Table 1 indicates the number of papers published in the Indian Journal of Chemical Technology during the periods from 2008 to 2017. It is evident from the table-1 that publications of the source journal was irregular during the study period on three occasions, i.e., September and November 2014 issues, January and March 2015 issues and May and June 2015 issues. Five issues in 2014 and four issues in 2015 were brought out. However, before and after 2014 and 2015, the journal has been publishing regularly with all the six issues and with more number of papers. The result indicates that maximum 96 papers (14.86%) published in 2008 and minimum 46 papers (7.12 %) in 2015. The study journal published on an average of 64.6 papers per year during the study period.

6.2. Relative Growth Rate and Doubling Time

The research outcomes from the Indian Journal of Chemical Technology during the period from 2008 to 2017 were measure with the scientometric techniques Relative Growth Rate (RGR) and Doubling Time (DT) [6]. It is evidence from the Table 2 that the relative growth rate and doubling time of research outcomes have been fluctuating from 0.10 to 0.55 and from 1.27 to 7.20 respectively during the study period.

6.3. Authorship Pattern

Table 3 indicates the authorship pattern of research papers published in the Indian Journal of Chemical Technology during the period under study. It reveals that ninety six percent of the papers were written by multiple authors and on the other hand single author's contribution was 3.87 percent during the study period.

6.4. Collaboration Measures

The collaborative authorship is a well recognized feature of modem science. The study on "Authorship trend and collaborative research in Genetics and plant breeding" conducted by Mallinath Kumbar and N.G.Kumar [7] found that intellectual sharing took place by two or more scientists. Multiple authors' researches are very familiar in the present days. To evaluate the Lawani's Collaborative Index and Subramanian's Degree of Collaboration, Isola Ajiferuk [8] and others introduce the new collaboration measure Collaboration Coefficient. The above mentioned three collaboration measures are calculated and presented in the table 4. Subramanian [9]'s Degree of Collaboration follows between 0.89 and 1.00 , Collaboration Index between 2.84 and 3.36 and Collaboration Coefficient between 0.56 and 0.66, the present study's result proved the previous studies statement and collaborative authorship pattern exist in field of Chemical Engineering and Technology during the study period.

6.5. Country Wise Distribution of Contributors

The country wise distributions of the contributors are presented in the table 5. During the period of study, totally 646 research papers were contributed by 2074 contributors from 37 countries. Among the 37 countries, nearly 74.25 percent of the contributors are belonged to India and remaining 25.75 percent of the contributors are belongs to the foreign countries. India (74.25%) stands first place followed by China on second place (6.03 %) and Iran on third place with (5.79%).

6.6. Indian States and Union Territories Wise Distribution of Contributors

Table 6 depicts the Indian states and union territories wise distribution of the contributors. The result shows that among 1540 Indian contributors, more than two hundred contributors are belonged to Tamil Nadu and the contributors, between 100 and 200, belonged to Maharashtra (191); Karnataka (162); Uttarpradesh (132) and Gujarat (100). The remaining 723 contributors are belonged to remaining 17 Indian States and Union Territories.

6.7. Year wise Distribution of References

Table 7 displays the number of references cited by the authors in their papers. Out of the 646 papers, 226 papers (34.98%) have 21 - 30 references, followed by 213 papers (32.97%) with more than 30 references, 117 papers (27.40%) with 11 - 20 references and 30 papers (4.64%) with 1 -10 references. Table also indicates the year -wise distribution of number of references.

6.8. Average Number of References per Year

Table 8 focuses the average number of references appended to the papers during the study period. The totals of 17,862 references were cited in 646 papers during the study period in the source journal. Out of the 17862 reference, more than two thousand references were cited in the papers published in the years 2008, 2009 and 2017 and the minimum 1304 references were contained in the papers published in 2015. The averages of 27.65 references were cited per paper in the journal during the study periods.

8. Conclusions

The study deals with the scientometric analysis of the five years (2013-2017) research publications of Indian Journal of Chemical Technology. An average number of paper published during the study periods are 64. The study of authorship pattern shows dominance of two authored, three authored and four authored research papers. Mallinath Kumbar and N.G.Kumar found that intellectual sharing took place by two or more scientists. Multiple authors' researches is very familiar in the present days. The present day also proved this statement. Seventy four percent of contributors were belonged to India and twenty six percent belonged to other countries. Among the Indian contributors, more than hundred contributors are belonged to Tamilnadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttarpradesh and Gujarat.

References

[1.] Hood W W and Wilson C, The literature of bibliometric, scientometrics, and informetrics, Scientometrics, 52 (2) (2001) 291-314.

[2.] Zafrunnisha N and PullaReddy V, Sources of scientometrics, PEARL : A Journal of Library and Information Science, 3 (1) (2009) 49-51.

[3.] Padme S L and Vaishali K, Bibliometric analysis of Indian Journal of Chemistry- Section A, International Journal of Information Dissemination and Technology, 6 (2) (2016) 103-106.

[4.] Nattar S, Indian Journal of Physics: A Scientometric analysis, International Journal of Library and Information Science, 1(4) (2009) 55-61.

[5.] http://www.niscair.res.in/ (Accessed on 16.06.2018)

[6.] Ravichandra Rao I K and Neelameghan A, Scientometrics, (Ess Ess Publications; New Delhi), 2014, 239-252.

[7.] Kumbar M and Kumar M G, Authorship trend and collaborative research in genetics and plant breeding, SRELS Journal of Information Management, 48(2) (2011) 113-122.

[8.] Ajiferuke Isola, Burell Q and Tague Jean, Collaborative Coefficient: a single measure of the degree of collaboration in research, Scientometrics, 14 (5-6) (1988) (421-433).

[9.] Subramanyam K, Bibliometric studies as research collaboration: a review, Journal of Information Science, 6 (1993) 35.

R Jayabal (a) and K Balasubramanian (b)

Librarian(SG), Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu E-mail: iavabalraiu@gmail.com

Research Scholar, Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya College of Arts and Science , Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

E-mail: balasubramanian171176@gmail.com

R Jayabal Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, jayabalraju@gmail.com

K Balasubramanian Research Scholar, Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, balasubramanian171176@gmail.com

Table 1: Year and Issue -Wise Distribution of Papers

S. No.    Month of      2008    2009    2010    2011    2012    2013
         Publications

1          January       16      13      10      10      10      10
2           March        16      11      11      10      10      10
3            May         16      12      10      10      10      10
4            July        16      12      10       9      10      10
5         September      16      12      10      10      10       9
6          November      16      10      11      10      10      10
7           Total        96      70      62      59      60      59
8             %         14.86   10.84   9.60    9.13    9.29    9.13

S. No.    Month of      2014    2015    2016    2017    Total
         Publications

1          January       10      12 *    10      15      116
2           March         9               9      14      100
3            May         10      12 *    12      12      114
4            July        10              11      13      101
5         September      10 *    11      15      13      116
6          November              11      12       9       99
7           Total        49      46      69      76      646
8             %         7.59    7.12    10.68   11.76   100.00

* combined issues

Table 2: Relative Growth Rate and Doubling Time of Papers

S.    Year   No. of   Cumulative No.    W1     W2    RGR    Doubting
No.          Papers     of Papers                           Time (Dt)

1     2008     96           96                4.56
2     2009     70          166         4.56   5.11   0.55     1.27
3     2010     62          228         5.11   5.43   0.32     2.18
4     2011     59          287         5.43   5.66   0.23     3.01
5     2012     60          347         5.66   5.85   0.19     3.65
6     2013     59          406         5.85   6.01   0.16     4.41
7     2014     49          455         6.01   6.12   0.11     6.08
8     2015     46          501         6.12   6.22   0.10     7.20
9     2016     69          570         6.22   6.35   0.13     5.37
10    2017     76          646         6.35   6.47   0.13     5.54

Table 3: Authorship Pattern

S.    Year                   Type of Authors                   Total
No.
              Single   Double   Three   Four     More than
                                                four authors

1     2008      1        33      30      19          13          96
2     2009      4        26      20      14          6           70
3     2010      7        22      15      10          8           62
4     2011      2        20      20      11          6           59
5     2012      1        18      22      11          8           60
6     2013      3        11      25      14          6           59
7     2014      1        15      11      15          7           49
8     2015      0        15      12      10          9           46
9     2016      3        18      14      19          15          69
10    2017      3        21      21      18          13          76
      Total     25      199      190     141         91         646
        %      3.87    30.80    29.41   21.83      14.09       100.00

Table 4: Collaboration Measures

S.    Year   Single   Multiple   Total   DC *   CI **   CC ***
No.          Author   Authors

1     2008   1        95         96      0.99   3.10    0.64
2     2009   4        66         70      0.94   2.89    0.59
3     2010   7        55         62      0.89   2.84    0.56
4     2011   2        57         59      0.97   2.98    0.62
5     2012   1        59         60      0.98   3.12    0.64
6     2013   3        56         59      0.95   3.15    0.64
7     2014   1        48         49      0.98   3.24    0.65
8     2015   0        46         46      1.00   3.28    0.66
9     2016   3        66         69      0.96   3.36    0.65
10    2017   3        73         76      0.96   3.22    0.64
Total        25       621        646     0.96   3.11    0.63

* Degree of Collaboration ** Collaborate Index *** Collaborate
Coefficient

Table 5: Country Wise Distribution of Contributors

S. No.      Country         No. of         %
                          Contributors

1        India                1540       74.25
2        China                125         6.03
3        Iran                 120         5.79
4        Turkey                56         2.70
5        Croatia               35         1.69
6        Bangladesh            33         1.59
7        Malaysia              27         1.30
8        Egypt                 22         1.06
9        Mexico                11         0.53
10       Thailand              11         0.53
11       Vietnam               8          0.39
12       Iraq                  8          0.39
13       Saudi Arabia          8          0.39
14       South Africa          7          0.34
15       Morocco               7          0.34
16       Algeria               6          0.29
17       Nigeria               6          0.29
18       Sri Lanka             5          0.24
19       Spain                 4          0.19
20       Russia                4          0.19
21       Ethiopia              4          0.19
22       South Korea           4          0.19
23       Venezuela             4          0.19
24       Pakistan              3          0.14
25       Serbia                2          0.10
26       Singapore             2          0.10
27       Canada                2          0.10
28       Zimbabwe              1          0.05
29       USA                   1          0.05
30       Norway                1          0.05
31       UK                    1          0.05
32       Kuwait                1          0.05
33       Korea                 1          0.05
34       France                1          0.05
35       Indonesia             1          0.05
36       Germany               1          0.05
37       Czech Republic        1          0.05
         Total                2074       100.00

Table 6: Indian States and Union Territories Wise Distribution of
Contributors

S. No.   States / Union      No. of         %
           Territories     Contributors

1          Tamil Nadu          232        15.06
2          Maharashtra         191        12.40
3           Karnataka          162        10.52
4         Uttarpradesh         132         8.57
5            Gujarat           100         6.49
6          West Bengal          82         5.32
7         Madhyapradesh         75         4.87
8            Odisha             70         4.55

9            Kerala             64         4.16
10          Rajasthan           59         3.83
11            Delhi             52         3.38
12            Assam             52         3.38
13          Jharkhand           48         3.12
14          Telangana           43         2.79
15           Haryana            41         2.66
16        Andhrapradesh         39         2.53
17           Punjab             37         2.40
18       Jammu & Kashmir        18         1.17
19        Chhattisgarh          17         1.10
20         Uttarakhand          15         0.97
21       Himachalpradesh        9          0.58
22             Goa              2          0.13
Total                          1540       100.00

Table 7: Year wise Distribution of References

                No. of Reference              Total
Year
        1-10   11-20   21-30   More than 30

2008     8      32      38          18          96
2009     2      24      27          17          70
2010     3      23      19          17          62
2011     1      12      21          25          59
2012     3      21      23          13          60
2013     3      14      25          17          59
2014     1      11      15          22          49
2015     2      10      13          21          46
2016     7      18      22          22          69
2017     0      12      23          41          76
Total    30     177     226        213         646
%       4.64   27.40   34.98      32.97       100.00

Table 8: Average No. of References per Year

Particulars     2008    2009    2010    2011    2012    2013

No. of Papers   96      70      62      59      60      59

Total No. of    2188    2203    1558    1718    1544    1549
References

Average         22.79   31.47   25.13   29.12   25.73   26.25
Number of
References
per Paper

Particulars     2014    2015    2016    2017    Total

No. of Papers   49      46      69      76      646

Total No. of    1480    1304    1753    2565    17862
References

Average         30.20   28.35   25.41   33.75   27.65
Number of
References
per Paper