Growth Pattern of Literature and Scientific Productivity of Authors in Indian Earth Science (1978-88): A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

In the present study, the rate of growth of Indian earth science literature was determined by calculating relative growth rates and doubling time for total number of all types of publications and pages separately for the period 1978-88. The results show that the mean relative growth rate has shown a declining trend from 0.35 during 1979-83 to 0.11 during 1984-88. Correspondingly, mean doubling time has increased from 2.6 years to 7 years for the same periods. The mean doubling time for Indian earth science literature is 4.8 years which is slightly less than the growth rate of earth science literature as a whole. The growth curves and chi-square values obtained show that the growth of Indian earth science literature follows logistic pattern of growth. The results of the study related to scientific productivity of authors show that the percentage of authors contributing olle publication is 63% of the total number of authors which is fairly close to Lotka's predicted value of 60%. The scientific productivity of authors is found to conform to Lotka's law and distribution of the scientific productivity follows negative binomial distribution.