A Ten-year Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends in Three Leading Ecology Journals during 2003-2012

G Saravanan,J Dominic

doi:10.1633/jistap.2014.2.3.4

Abstract

This paper attempts to highlight quantitatively the growth and development of literature in the field of ecology in terms of publication output using the resource Web of Science®. The focus of this analysis was to study the literature on ecology published in three journals, viz., Ecology Letters, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, and Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics. 2946 records were retrieved for 10 years (2003–2012). The study revealed that multiple authorship in the field with collaborations of two (30.31%) and three authors (19.89%) was dominant. The Degree of collaboration, Collaborative coefficient, and Collaborative index were calculated and the applicability of Lotka’s law was tested. The study identified five-year patterns in research trends, using the three studied journals, to see if the subjects of focus changed within a decade. The most productive institution was University Calif. Davis, USA, followed by University Calif. Santa Barbara, USA, and University Queensland, Australia, and the most productive countries were the USA followed by UK and Canada.

Highlights

With the population explosion, associated with increasing industrialization and urbanization in the last few decades, the study of ecology has gained importance, evolving as a separate discipline
The following two hypotheses were cast: that research trends in a dynamic scientific discipline like Ecology change over the course of a decade, reflecting the fluctuations in the field based on the issues prevailing during the period and based on the priorities of the funding agencies; and multiple authored publications would be more in number than single authored ones
The three journals were identified on the ISI Web of KnowledgeSM in the Journal Citation Report® under the Subject Category Section ‘Ecology’ with the 2012 impact factor and sorted by 5-year impact factor in decreasing order. (Journal Citation Report® - journal performance metrics offer a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world’s leading journals.) To strengthen the data fruitfully, personal interaction with domain experts in ecology was conducted

Summary

Introduction

With the population explosion, associated with increasing industrialization and urbanization in the last few decades, the study of ecology has gained importance, evolving as a separate discipline. During the last three decades, the research in this field has gained momentum due to the occurrences of natural Open Access. All JISTaP content is Open Access, meaning it is accessible online to everyone, without fee and authors’ permission. Under this license, authors reserve the copyright for their content; they permit anyone to unrestrictedly use, distribute, and reproduce the content in any medium as far as the original authors and source are cited. Redistribution, or reproduction of a work, users must clarify the license terms under which the work was produced.

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