How do journals on the periphery compare with mainstream scientific journals?

S. Arunachalam and K. Manorama

Scientometrics Volume 14, Numbers 1-2 / July, 1988

Based on the premise that citations in scientific journals can tell us a lot about the journals, we have compared Indian journals in the fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, geology and ecology with leading world journals. The two criteria compared are the age of references and the journals often cited in each of the journals considered. Our results show that although overall Indian science is mediocre, parts of India’s scientific enterprise are cognitively better related to world science. The peripherality is not uniform across the board, but some areas like astronomy and to some extent physics are closer to the central or mainstream science than others. Although citation analysis is not normally used for cross-field comparisons, this paper demonstrates that, if used judiciously, citation analysis can yield valuable insights into issues involving many fields.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02020244

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How relevant is medical research done in India? – A study based on Medline

S. Arunachalam

Current Science Volume 72, Issue 12, 25 June 1997, Pages 912-922

Does India perform medical research in areas where it is most needed? According to Government of India sources, India suffers mainly from diarrhoeal diseases, infancy diseases, respiratory diseases, tuberculosis and malaria. An analysis of journal use as seen from seven years of Medline reveals that Indian researchers are active in general and internal medicine, paediatrics, pharmacology, immunology, pathology, oncology, surgery, cardiovascular research, gastroenterology and neurosciences. Apart from analysing the reasons for the mismatch, this study provides inventories of the amount and nature of available expertise and its institutional and geographic distribution.

http://www.ias.ac.in/j_archive/currsci/72/12/912-922/viewpage.html

Science in India – A profile based on India’s publications as covered by Science Citation Index 1989-1992

S. Arunachalam, R. Srinivansan and Vidhyalakshmi Raman

Current Science Volume 74, Issue 5, 10 March 1998, Pages 433-441

With a view to mapping scientific research in India, we have analysed papers originating in India and indexed in the CD-ROM version of Science Citation Index (SCI) in the four years 1989-1992 With more than 10,000 papers in each year (more than 42,000 papers in about 2,300 journals indexed in SCI in the four years), India is the twelfth largest publishing nation, down from eighth in 1980. Italy, the Netherlands, Australia and Spain have published more papers than India in journals indexed in SCI in 1992. Chemistry and physics account for the bulk of the papers, followed by engineering and clinical medicine. India’s contribution to areas such as classical biology and agriculture is not properly reflected in SCI, as many journals in which Indian scientists publish are not covered by SCI. Although most Indian papers appear in low impact journals, the number of papers appearing in leading journals of the world especially in the areas of physics, chemistry and materials science is increasing, even if only marginally. Also, the number of papers appearing in foreign journals as a whole as well as the average impact factor of journals in which Indian scientists have published their work, is increasing, reflecting the increasing awareness among Indian scientists for the need to publish in high-impact journals. While the slide from the eighth to the twelfth position – from 2.8% of the world literature to about 2.0% – should be of concern, the increasing use of high impact journals is a welcome trend. In this macrolevel analysis we have looked at India as a whole and have not attempted to analyse the data at lesser levels of aggregation.

http://www.ias.ac.in/j_archive/currsci/74/5/433-441/viewpage.html

Use of SCI-based publication counts

S. Arunachalam

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 85, NO. 10, 25 NOVEMBER 2003

Recently Karandikar and Sunder 1 and Pichappan 2 have expressed some misgivings about the use of Science Citation Index-based publication counts. I would, however, like to argue that the stand that the total number of papers published from a country should not be used as a science indicator is extreme. There is, I think, a strong risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/nov252003/1391.pdf

The public domain under pressure

Gail Hodge , Paul Uhlir, Subbiah Arunachalam and Tom Moritz

Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, (2005) Volume 40 Issue 1, Pages 443 – 444

Public domain information, whether limited to judicial decisions or extended to all government-authored or sponsored works, has been expounded as a means of ensuring a knowledgeable citizenry, promoting economic advancement, and ensuring that publicly funded information is not “double taxed”. However, the public domain has come under increased pressures as the global information economy changes. The speakers in this session will address these pressures from a number of different national and disciplinary views.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/meet.1450400162

Gail Hodge ¹, Paul Uhlir ², Subbiah Arunachalam ³, Tom Moritz ⁴

On publication based indicators

S. Arunachalam

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 86, NO. 5, 10 MARCH 2004

According to Satyanarayana and Jain1 ‘the scientific community is not satisfied with the existing quantitative indices like the SCI and its twin publication, the JCR’. I wonder how many scientists they polled to arrive at this conclusion. If this were the case, Thomson-ISI would have gone out of business long ago; in reality though the company is thriving and the revenue brought in by citation index databases and their derivatives is on the rise. Since the early 1990s, SCI has spawned half a dozen field-specific citation index databases (for neurosciences, biotechnology, materials science, etc.) and Thomson-ISI is now extending their database back to 1900 so one can trace the evolution of ideas over a much longer period. The idea that the cognitive link between citing and cited documents provides a far better handle for retrieving related docu-ments than mere keywords was originally exploited by Gene Garfield in the early 1960s. It has since been picked up by other database producers and new services such as CrossRef have come up. If scientists were unhappy with SCI, these developments would not have taken place. The citation databases of ISI are used widely by scientists in many countries, as evidenced by the large number of subscribers. I myself subscribe to CD ver According to Satyanarayana and Jain 1 ‘the scientific community is not satisfied with the existing quantitative indices like the SCI and its twin publication, the JCR’. I wonder how many scientists they polled to arrive at this conclusion. If this were the case, Thomson-ISI would have gone out of business long ago; in reality though the company is thriving and the revenue brought in by citation index data bases and their derivatives is on the rise. Since the early 1990s, SCI has spawned half a dozen field-specific citation index databases (for neurosciences, biotechno logy, materials science, etc.) and Thom son-ISI is now extending their database back to 1900 so one can trace the evolu tion of ideas over a much longer period. The idea that the cognitive link between citing and cited documents provides a far better handle for retrieving related docu ments than mere keywords was origi nally exploited by Gene Garfield in the early 1960s. It has since been picked up by other database producers and new ser vices such as CrossRef have come up. If scientists were unhappy with SCI, these developments would not have taken place. The citation databases of ISI are used widely by scientists in many countries, as evidenced by the large number of…….

http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/869/01/Arun_16.pdf

subscribers. I myself subscribe to CD ver-

Workshops on open access in India

S. Arunachalam

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 86, NO. 12, 25 JUNE 2004

Two workshops on open access and institutional archives were organized with a view to developing a cadre of open access experts in Indian higher educational and research institutions. The primary purpose of the workshops was to provide Indian scientists and librarians with (i) a thorough understanding of the global scientific and scholarly communication issues that open access addresses; (ii) the technical knowledge of how to set up and…….

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jun252004/1589.pdf

Information and communication technologies and poverty alleviation

S. Arunachalam

Current Science, Volume 87, Issue 7, 10 October 2004, Pages 960-966

The role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play in poverty alleviation is discussed based largely on what has happened in the past six years in a cluster of ten villages in Pondicherry, southern India through the intervention of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. If intelligently used, ICTs can make a difference to the lives of people. The article concludes with a set of recommendations and action points for governments in developing countries, donor agencies and non-governmental organizations involved in implementing micro level poverty alleviation programmes.

http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/oct102004/960.pdf

The science race continues in Asia

S. Arunachalam

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 94, NO. 7, 10 APRIL 2008

The geography of science, technology and innovation is changing. It is no longer that the United States, western Europe and Japan are the only key players. Asia is emerging in a significant way. Not only China and India, but also South Korea and Singapore are moving forward rapidly. The growth of science in these countries and investments in research made in Brazil and South Africa are leading to a new equilibrium in global science and technology.

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/apr102008/848.pdf

A historiographic analysis of fuel-cell research A historiographic analysis of fuel-cell research in Asia – China racing ahead

S. Arunachalam and B. Viswanathan

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 95, NO. 1, 10 JULY 2008

Fuel–cell research in China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, over the years 1983-2007 is analysed and compared with that in USA for number of papers, document type, journals used and international collaboration. For India and China we have also identified the key researchers and institutions. Using HistCite, the visualization technique developed by Garfield and colleagues, we have constructed the historiographs for India and China based on both local citation scores (LCS) and global citation scores, and identified key papers. We find that the knowledge flow among different Asian countries is rather limited and that China has something to offer to India. The thrust in China is in developing noble metal nanoparticle catalysts supported on carbon nanotubes and the thrust in India is in the area of direct methanol fuel cells. In India, A. K. Shukla is the single most significant contributor to fuel cell research. He is the author of 14 of the 50 nodes in the India LCS historiograph.

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jul102008/36.pdf