1 Introduction

Scholarly communication is remarkably essential for the understanding of the genesis and progress of disciplines. There are various statistical tools used to explore the databases in library science. Among these, bibliometric have been developed as a tool for measuring and monitoring scientific output (Pritchard (1969), Nicholas et al. (1978)). The statistical models of scholarly communication flow can be established by bibliometric techniques using reference made to other documents i.e. citation analysis. Counting citations is often called "citation analysis". Information about the article's impact on its discipline can be gained by counting the number of times that article has been cited. If an article has a high number of citations, then one can conclude that it has been the subject of discussion or criticism in its discipline. Thus, citation analysis is used to develop relationships between scholarly communications like documents, journals etc. Further it also can be used to identify the flow of topics within and among disciplines (Garfield (1955, 1978, 1979)). There have been numerous study conducted on citation analysis of various single and multiple journals in different fields (Sandison (1989), Clark (2009), Rana (2010), Singh (2013)).

2 Scope

Gandhian Literature for decades was matter of discussion for Gandhi's impact on varied disciplines and nowadays, it has is emerged as a full- fledged new discipline. Looking into this emerging trend and increased publication activity on this subject, the present work is related to citation analysis of the one of the most popular and the oldest journal "Gandhi Marg".

3 Objectives

The prime objectives of this study are to find out the different characteristics of citations in the source journal under consideration, in terms of:

a) The year wise distribution of citations, the rate of citations per article, and the use pattern of different type of documents cited.

b) The core books and journals and the classic publications in the field.

c) The citing 'half-life' of the literature in the field.

d) The authorship pattern of citations, and highly ranked/core authors in the field.

4 Methodology

In the present study, the journal Gandhi Marg is considered for citation analysis. It was started in 1957 and, it has been publishing Quarterly by Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi. Every issue of the journal has been examined for the period of 1994 to 2013 and all necessary information related to citations is arranged in the form of database specifically designed for citations analysis.

5 Results and Discussion

5.1 Citation Availability in the Journal of "Gandhi Marg"

In order to carry out citation analysis the citations were collected from the papers of the journal Gandhi Marg, for 20 years i.e. during 1994-2013. The database for analysis has been planned on the basis of all essential information associated with citations. The outcome of this came out to 507 articles. Of 507 articles, 56 articles were found without citations or references. So, the remaining 451 articles contributed to 9612 citations after removing duplicate citation (selecting one citation from similar citation(s) repeating in the article) (Table 1).

Table 1 Availability of Citations in the Journal "Gandhi Marg"
during 1994-2013

No. of article with    No. of articles    Total no. of   Total no. of
     citations        without citations     articles      citations

451                          56               507            9612

5.2 Year wise Distribution of Citations

The source journal contained 507 articles, comprising of 9612 citations. The highest number of citations in an article was 114, whereas the lowest number of citations was zero (as 56 articles found without citations). The details of year wise distribution of citing articles with corresponding citations and rate of citation per article in a particular year is illustrated in Table 2 and Figure 1. The articles published in years 1994 and 2006 were observed to have the least number of articles i.e. 16. Whereas in year 2009, number of articles published were maximum i.e. 30. In case of citation, the least were observed in year 2002 with 319 citations and maximum were 645 in year 2008. However, it is important to note that the highest value of average citations per article was 36 for the year 2006 and the lowest value was 13.29 for year 2002. Further, the overall average citations per article for the period 1994 to 2013 were 21.31.

5.3 Bibliographical Distribution of Citations

In order to extend the information in the field of any subject every document has its own importance. For communicating and documenting the knowledge for future discussion and reference, the various types of past information channels are being used like books, composite books, journals, reports, proceedings, letter etc. Table 3 gives the range of documents along with their citation analysis and shows that the mostly cited documents are chief sources i.e. books, journals and composite books. These three documents all together have 73.62 % of the total citations. It is interested to note here that 4525 citations out of total 9612 citations were books. It forms about 47.08 % of the total. This was followed by journals and composite books having 14.11 % and 12.43 % citations respectively. The sources originated by Gandhi like Harijan, Young India and Harijan Sevak were shown separately as these were referred frequently. The comparative position of various bibliographical forms used by the authors during the period is shown in Table 4. From this table, it is clear that there is no specific trend because most of the cited forms have same kind of distribution in all the years. Moreover, the year wise citing trend of top three bibliographical forms have been presented in Figure 2.

5.4 Chronological Distribution of Citations and Aging of Literature

The characteristic of the cited literature that are studied often of any discipline is called an age. This study helps to reveal how rapidly the literature on the any subject becomes obsolete. It is also useful for the prediction of how far a search must go back for obtaining a representative sample of the published area. In order to identify the period from which the literature was frequently used, the comparison of the chronological distribution of the cited document has been presented. In the present case, only 9311 citations are taken into account (since 301 citations were found without year) for analysis. The chronological distribution of citations from year 1687 to 2013 is presented in Table 5 and Figure 3. This period has been distributed into 12 groups, each of one decade (except the first group having the span of 216 years i.e. from 1687 to 1903). It is clear that about 20.38 % of the cited literature i.e. 1959 citations, irrespective of the documents has published during the decade 1994-2003 followed by those published during 1984-1993, having 1823 citations or 18.97 %. Further, for period 1964-1973, 2004-2013 and for 1974-1983, the percentage of citations were very close i.e. 11.36 %, 10.75 % and 10.54 % respectively. The decade from 1904-1913 has the lowest number of citations i.e. 78 or 0.81 %. It is also observed that the number of citations dominates for the four consecutive decade i.e. from 1964-2013.

5.5 Chronological Distribution of Books Citations

The chronological distribution of all the 4525 (remaining 52 citations were cited without year) books citations is shown in Table 6 and Figure 4. The book citations cover the time period from 1687 to 2013. It is observed that the decades 1984-1993 and 1994-2003 have the highest (1027, contributing 22.70 % and 918 contributing 20.29 %) and the lowest (19, contributing 0.42 %) number of citations respectively. It is also observed that the recent four decades i.e. 1964-1973; 1974-1983; 1984-1993 and 1994-2003 have contributed more than 50 % citations i.e. about 69.52 % of the total citations.

5.6 Chronological Distribution of Journal Citations

In case of journals, 1356 citations are found with year and 32 citations found without year. The sequential distribution of journals citations from the time period 1904 to 2013 is illustrated in Table 7 and Figure 5. Like the chronological distribution of book, it is observed that the recent three decades i.e. 1984-1993; 1994-2003 and 2004-2013 have contributed 1020 citations that contributes more than 75.22 % of the total citations.

zzz

Table 7:--Chronological Distribution of Journal Citations

     Year        Document Citation   Percentage of Citations

1904-1913                2                    0.15
1914-1923               12                    0.88
1924-1933               19                    1.40
1934-1943                5                    0.37
1944-1953                9                    0.66
1954-1963               56                    4.13
1964-1973               74                    5.46
1974-1983               127                   9.37
1984-1993               340                   25.07
1994-2003               435                   32.08
2004-2013               245                   18.07
Year not found          32                    2.36
                       1356                  100.00

5.7 Half-Life of Gandhian Literature

The overall half-life of Gandhian literature was 30 years, whereas 20 years in Journals and 29 years in books. The overall half-life of literature indicates that the libraries on social science can consider in their acquisition policy to acquire 30 years back literature as being the most active life of literature. It means that the researchers should consult the journals and books at least of the last 20 years for journals literature and 29 years for books from the current year while pursuing their research on social science and allied subjects as being most active literature, covering 50 % of the current literature.

5.8 Authorship Pattern

The uniqueness of any subject literature not only depends on the basic publishing patterns but also on author's contribution. Therefore, authorship analysis is important for the citation analysis of any field. Thus, in this work, the authors were analysed to determine frequencies of single, multiple and the noteworthy or core authors available in the subject. A clear picture of an analysis of year wise distribution of authorship pattern is presented in Table 8. From 9612 citations, 7586 citations had author's names, while 2026 citations were found either without authors or having corporate authorship. It is identified from the table that single authorship has prominently been observed, with 6860 citations (90.43 %) in the field. Two author's contributions ranked on second position with 611 citations contributing 8.05 %, whereas three and more than three authors contributed only 1.52 %. In the year 2009, single author and two authors citations were highest i.e. 532 (7.01 %) and 61 (0.80 %) citations respectively, whereas three or more than three authors citation were highest in the year 2008.

Table 8:--Year-wise Distribution of Authorship Pattern

Year   Single            Two              More than three

        No of      %      No of     %      No of     %
       Authors           Authors          Authors

1994      298    3.93        30    0.40        8    0.11
1995      381    5.02        30    0.40        1    0.01
1996      325    4.28        28    0.37        3    0.04
1997      312    4.11        21    0.28        0    0.00
1998      304    4.01        27    0.36        1    0.01
1999      349    4.60        33    0.44        7    0.09
2000      346    4.56        31    0.41        4    0.05
2001      320    4.22        26    0.34        3    0.04
2002      237    3.12        15    0.20        4    0.05
2003      227    2.99        14    0.18        3    0.04
2004      272    3.59        12    0.16        4    0.05
2005      194    2.56        14    0.18        2    0.03
2006      413    5.44        46    0.61        6    0.08
2007      226    2.98        23    0.30        3    0.04
2008      476    6.27        44    0.58        6    0.08
2009      532    7.01        61    0.80       10    0.13
2010      450    5.93        52    0.69       11    0.15
2011      464    6.12        34    0.45       13    0.17
2012      351    4.63        26    0.34       10    0.13
2013      383    5.05        44    0.58       16    0.21
         6860    90.43      611    8.05      115    1.52

Year   Total              Multiple-
                          authorship

        No of      %       No of     %
       Authors            Authors

1994      336     4.43        38    0.50
1995      412     5.43        31    0.41
1996      356     4.69        31    0.41
1997      333     4.39        21    0.28
1998      332     4.38        28    0.37
1999      389     5.13        40    0.53
2000      381     5.02        35    0.46
2001      349     4.60        29    0.38
2002      256     3.37        19    0.25
2003      244     3.22        17    0.22
2004      288     3.80        16    0.21
2005      210     2.77        16    0.21
2006      465     6.13        52    0.69
2007      252     3.32        26    0.34
2008      526     6.93        50    0.66
2009      603     7.95        71    0.94
2010      513     6.76        63    0.83
2011      511     6.74        47    0.62
2012      387     5.10        36    0.47
2013      443     5.84        60    0.79
         7586    100.00      726    9.57

5.9 Core and significant authors in Gandhian Literature

Core authors or researchers play extremely important role in the development of any discipline. Core authors are considered as the foundation of the particular discipline, since they play a significant role in the development of that subject. Thus, it is indispensable to know the core authors and their works for better understanding of any research. For this purpose, the citation analysis is considered as one of the suitable method to identify significant and core authors.

The first five positions were occupied by M K Gandhi, Gene Sharp, Raghavanlyer, Bhikhu Parekh and D.G. Tendulkar. As expected, the citations from M K Gandhi's contributions were maximum i.e. 614 of the total citations. The second position was received by Gene Sharp with 76 citations. It is clear that there is a tremendous gap of citations, an obviously every author prefer to read the paper written by M K Gandhi. One more important parameter came into the picture is that Jawaharlal Nehru holds the sixth position with 39 citations.

5.10 Core and Significant Journals in Gandhian Literature

The journals which are highly cited by the authors are known as core journal. These journals are very useful for researchers for their scientific communication. The study of quality, usefulness and suitability of journals is important for a librarian. The study related to core journal ranking is important in selection of journals and for assessing the significant journals in a particular subject field. The articles published in highly cited journals are always highly related and relevant articles to a particular subject. It was observed that there were 620journals having 1356 citations among them the Gandhi Marg has highest citations i.e. 177 citations of the total citation. This was followed by Economic and Political Weekly, Journal of Peace research, Mainstream and Alternatives, having 87, 38, 18 and 16 citations respectively.

5.11 Core and Significant Books and Composite Books in Gandhian Literature

Like journals, books are also frequently referred by the researchers. The repeatedly referred books are close to the subject. These highly cited books are also known as the citation classics. In the present field, it was found that there are 3261 books with 4525 citations. Among these, the most dominated book was Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi with 468 citations. The second position was occupied by The Storyof My Experiment with Truth:An Autobiography with 71 citations. This was followed by Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, Hind Swaraj, The Conquest of violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict and, having 44, 41 and 31citations respectively. These titles can be considered as the core titles of the cited books.

6 Conclusion

Citation analysis of the journal "Gandhi Marg" for the period under study reveals following findings:

1) The average number of citations about 21.31 per article shows that reasonably good numbers of past studies have been cited by the scholars while publishing the articles in the journal.

2) Books, journals and composite books were mostly cited by the scholars, which were accounting for 47.08 per cent, 14.11 per cent and 12.43 per cent of the total citations respectively. On the other hand, the publications started by Gandhi himself (Harijan, Young India and Harijan Sevak) have been cited 9.05 per cent of the total citations. Like other social science subjects, books, being the primary form were cited mostly. The study also shows that there has been proliferation of Gandhian Thoughts, however, the publications started and written by the Gandhi are still having the importance for the scholars.

3) The cited half-life of the literature published in the journals and books is 20 years and 29 years respectively. However, the overall half-life of Gandhian literature is 30 years. It is a good indicator for Gandhian Philosophy in a way that the Gandhi ji (died in 1948) had written most his contributions before 65 years ago, which is a double of the half-life of overall citing literature and three times of journals' citing half-life. It shows that the Gandhian thoughts and philosophy have been proliferating very well among the followers and scholars as they are being cited mostly, which is very good for the growth of the discipline.

4) Only 611 citations (8.05 %) have been authored by more than one author i.e. multiple authors, whereas 6860 citations (90.43 %) were authored by single author. It is evident that most of the studies have been cited which were contributed by individuals. The authors who got high degree of acknowledgement/citations for their thoughts were: MK Gandhi (7.24%), Gene Sharp (0.90%), Raghavanlyer (0.72%), BhikhuParekh (0.61%) and D G Tendulkar (0.58%). Only 7.24% citations of the literature written by Gandhi indicates that recently the Gandhian philosophy is not confined to only the writings by Gandhi, but due to proliferation of the subject many new scholars (4582 number of scholars) have emerged as per this study and they have been carried out the Gandhian philosophy further through their quality contributions/writings on Gandhian Philosophy.

5) M K Gandhi has received the maximum number of citations i.e. is 614. And there is a huge gap between the first and second position. As on second position the author Gene Sharp came with 76 citations

6) The journals' citations were scattered among 620 journals. The Gandhi Marg was ranked first with the highest citations i.e. 177, accounting for 13.05 per cent of the total citation received by the journals. The second position was occupied by Economical and Political Weekly with 87 citations accounting with 6.42 per cent. The mostly cited books were Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi and The Story of My Experiment with Truth: an Autobiography with 468 and 84 citations respectively, both written by Gandhi ji. These sources can be considered the classic in the field of Gandhian Studies.

References

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Garfield, E. Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation, Science, 1978, 168, 471-479. Garfield, E. Citation indexes for science: A new dimension in documentation through association of ideas, Science, 1955, 122(3159), 108-111.

Garfield, E. Is citation analysis a legitimate tool? Scientrometrics, 1979, 1(4), 359-375.

Nicholas, David, & Ritche, Maureen. Literature andbibliometrics, London: Clive Bingley. 1978 Pritchard, A. Statistical bibliography or bibliometrics, Journal of Documentation, 1969, 25(4), 348-349.

Rana, M.S. Scientrometric study of wild mammal research in India: authorship, distribution and research trend. Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing. Germany, 2010

Sandison, A. Documentation note: Thinking about citation analysis, Journal of Documentation, 1989, 45(1), 59-64.

Singh, Har. Citation analysis of Collection Building during 2005-2012, Collection Building, 2013, 32(3), 89-99.

Tsay, Ming-yueh & Shu, Zhu-yee. Journal bibliometric analysis: a case study on the Journal of Documentation, Journal of Documentation, 2010, 67(5), 806-822.

Dr. Shiv Singh

Assistant Librarian, Central Library, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India, Email shivsingh2005@gmail.com

Dr. Madan Singh Rana

University Librarian, HNB Garhwal University (a Central University), Srinagar, Uttarakhand, India, Email- msrana 2007@yahoo.co.in

Caption: Figure 2:--Citing Trends of Book, Journal, and Composite Book Citations

Caption: Figure 3:--Chronological Distribution of Citation

Caption: Figure 5:--Chronological Distribution of Journals Citations

Table 2 Year wise Distribution of Citations

       Total Number   Total Number   Average citation
Year   of Articles    of Citations     per article

1994        16            418             26.13
1995        24            519             21.63
1996        18            455             25.28
1997        21            466             22.19
1998        20            416             20.80
1999        23            472             20.52
2000        24            465             19.38
2001        20            486             24.30
2002        24            319             13.29
2003        24            376             15.67
2004        20            356             17.80
2005        23            313             13.61
2006        16            576             36.00
2007        22            352             16.00
2008        29            645             22.24
2009        30            801             26.70

2010        26            620             23.85
2011        21            600             28.57
2012        22            436             19.82
2013        28            521             18.61
           451            9612            21.31

Table 3:--Bibliographical Distribution of Citations

Rank   Document Type                    Citation   Cumulative
                                                    citation

  1    Book                                4525         4525
  2    Journal                             1356         5881
  3    Composite Book                      1195         7076
  4    Publications started by Gandhi       870         7946
  5    CWMG (Collected works of             468         8414
       Mahatma Gandhi)
  6    Newspaper                            372         8786
  7    Report                               279         9065
  8    Newsletter                           134         9199
  9    Website                              112         9311
 10    Conference Proceeding                 73         9384
 11    Speech                                38         9422
 12    Lecture                               30         9452
 13    Interview                             28         9480
 14    Thesis/Dissertation                   27         9507
 15    Magazine                              12         9519
 16    Manuscript                            12         9531
 17    News channel                          10         9541
       Other                                 71         9612

Rank   Document Type                      %     Cumulative
                                                    %

  1    Book                             47.08       47.08
  2    Journal                          14.11       61.18
  3    Composite Book                   12.43       73.62
  4    Publications started by Gandhi   9.05        82.67
  5    CWMG (Collected works of         4.87        87.54
       Mahatma Gandhi)
  6    Newspaper                        3.87        91.41
  7    Report                           2.90        94.31
  8    Newsletter                       1.39        95.70
  9    Website                          1.17        96.87
 10    Conference Proceeding            0.76        97.63
 11    Speech                           0.40        98.02
 12    Lecture                          0.31        98.34
 13    Interview                        0.29        98.63
 14    Thesis/Dissertation              0.28        98.91
 15    Magazine                         0.12        99.03
 16    Manuscript                       0.12        99.16
 17    News channel                     0.10        99.26
       Other                            0.74       100.00

Table 4:--Year-wise comparative data of Bibliographical
Distribution of Citations

Document Type   1994   1995   1996   1997   1998   1999   2000   2001

Book            159    259    229    211    201    263    217    245
Journal          73     74     71     53     62     61     65     49
Composite        49     61     49     52     52     54     87     53
Book
Publications     75     56     44     56     37     31     29     75
started by
Gandhi
CWMG             28     31     15     26     24     18     21     23
Newspaper        19     17     16     12     5      24     14     18
Report           2      4      12     16     15     8      7      10
Newsletter       6      6      4      17     8      7      7      7
Website                        1                           6
Proceeding       4      3      9      3      1             4      2
Speech                  3      2      4      2             1
Dissertation     1      3             1      3             1
Interview               1                                  2
Lecture                 1                    1             1      1
Presentation     1             2                           1      1
Magazine
Manuscript                            4      2      1      1      1
News channel                          1
Others           1      1      0      10     3      5      1      1

Document Type   2002   2003   2004   2005   2006   2007   2008   2009

Book            164    145    185    144    267    152    305    361
Journal          34     33     44     23     91     43     92    113
Composite        47     58     41     41     76     42     79     83
Book
Publications     33     91     35     32     44     50     71     45
started by
Gandhi
CWMG             5      26     25     12     28     9      11     56
Newspaper        23     6      12     25     15     7      16     47
Report           7      3      4      11     15     16     27     16
Newsletter       1      6      2      12     10     11     11     16
Website          3      4      3      1      8      9      12     28
Proceeding       1      1      3      3      7      6      6      11
Speech                         1      4      3      1      7      1
Dissertation            1                    1      3             1
Interview               1             1      3             1      14
Lecture                 1             1      3             1      2
Presentation
Magazine
Manuscript                            1      1             1
News channel                          1      1                    4
Others           1      0      1      1      3      3      5      3

Document Type   2010   2011     2012     2013     Total

Book            286    242      225      265      4525
Journal          95    120       63       97      1356
Composite        77     81       55       58       11
Book                                               95
Publications     23     15       17       11       87
started by                                          0
Gandhi
CWMG             41     7        40       22       468
Newspaper        18     50       11       17       372
Report           46     32       11       17       279
Newsletter       2      1                          134
Website          5      11       2        19       112
Proceeding       6      3                          73
Speech           1      3                 5        38
Dissertation     7      1        3        2        28
Interview               1        3        1        28
Lecture          4                                 16
Presentation     1      6                 2        14
Magazine                11                1        12
Manuscript                                         12
News channel     3                                 10
Others           5      16       6        4        70

Table 5:--Chronological Distribution of Citation

     Year        Document Citation   Percentage of Citations

1687-1903               42                    0.44
1904-1913               78                    0.81
1914-1923               192                   2.00
1924-1933               462                   4.81
1934-1943               504                   5.24
1944-1953               461                   4.80
1954-1963               652                   6.78
1964-1973              1092                   11.36
1974-1983              1013                   10.54
1984-1993              1823                   18.97
1994-2003              1959                   20.38
2004-2013              1033                   10.75
Year not found          301                   3.13
                       9612                  100.00

Table 6:--Chronological Distribution of Books Citations

     Year        Document Citation   Percentage of Citations

1687-1903               28                    0.62
1904-1913               31                    0.69
1914-1923               19                    0.42
1924-1933               95                    2.10
1934-1943               118                   2.61
1944-1953               250                   5.52
1954-1963               417                   9.22
1964-1973               611                   13.50
1974-1983               590                   13.04
1984-1993              1027                   22.70
1994-2003               918                   20.29
2004-2013               369                   8.15
Year not found          52                    1.15
                       4525                  100.00

Figure 1:--Year wise Distribution of Citations

                      No. of     No. of      Average citation
Year                  articles   citations   per article

1994                  16         418         26.13
1995                  24         519         21.63
1996                  18         455         25.28
1997                  21         466         22.19
1998                  20         416         20.80
1999                  23         472         20.52
2000                  24         465         19.38
2001                  20         486         24.30
2002                  24         319         13.29
2003                  24         376         15.67
2004                  20         356         17.80
2005                  23         313         13.61
2006                  16         576         36
2007                  22         352         16
2008                  29         645         22.24
2009                  30         801         26.70
2010                  26         620         23.85
2011                  21         600         28.57
2012                  22         436         19.82
2013                  28         521         18.61

Note: Table made from line graph.

Figure 4:--Chronological Distribution of Books Citations

            Books citation   % of books citation

1687-1903         28               0.62
1904-1913         31               0.69
1914-1923         19               0.42
1924-1933         95               2.10
1934-1943        118               2.61
1944-1953        250               5.52
1954-1963        417               9.22
1964-1973        611              13.50
1974-1983        590              13.04
1984-1993       1027              22.70
1994-2003        918              20.29
2004-2013        369               8.15

Note: Table made from line graph.