Your journal research ‘business’ is going defunct!: a canonical trend analysis illustration

Abstract

A journal publishing house grows by maintaining and increasing the level of production of journals over the years. As a result, a non-decreasing trend becomes worrisome, because it may mean some likelihood of decline in journal publications. A declining trend warrants an investigation into this aspect, and possible intervention methods for a turnaround to increase journal publications. A respected publishing house in South Africa showed declining trends in its annual yield of various of its journals. The aim of the study was to measure the journal productivity of various journals in a specified publishing house with specific objectives being to determine the level of production over the years; to compare the level of production for the various journals; and to identify the most produced and the least produced journals. A categorical multivariate time series analysis-based study design was conducted. A trend of published articles in a South African oral health-based journal publishing house was investigated for 11-years from 2008 to 2018 in which 197 journals were used. The journals were under the subfields of direct restorative dentistry (DRD), direct restorative materials (DRM), endodontics and paedodontics. Publications of the paedodontics and direct restorative dentistry and materials journals showed a decline over the years, to their extinction. There was no journal on indirect restorative materials, which is a field related to other restorative journals. Merging these could enhance the popularity of a new one. Then, the constantly low endodontics may be augmented by increasing the journal scope.