Application of Bradford’s Law of Scattering to the Physics Literature: A Study of Doctoral Theses Citations at the Indian Institute of Science

Abstract

One of the areas in bibliometric research concerns the application of most commonly used bibliometric laws such as Bradford’s Law of Scattering. The paper gives a review of the scholarly contribution on the various facets of Bradford’s Law. In addition to the theoretical aspects of the law, review covers papers dealing with the application of the law in the various subject fields. A study on five-year data of journals (2004-2008) cited by the physicists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangaluru was carried out to examine the applicability of Bradford’s Law of Scattering, which include 690 periodicals containing 11,319 references collected from 79 doctoral theses during the period 2004-08. Ranked list of journals was prepared, and Physical Review-B with 9.53 per cent citation, followed by Physical Review-A with 7.69 per cent, and Astrophysical Journal with 5.47 per cent citations were the most preferred journals. Applicability of Bradford’s Law in various methods was tested. The journal distribution pattern of the IISc doctoral theses does not fit the Bradford’s distribution pattern. The Bradford multipliers were calculated, and the law found to be applicable with the value of k as 1.2. The distribution of the journals in three zones was made and the number of references in each zone was then estimated. The applicability of Leimkuhler model was also tested with the present data.