Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science: A scientometric profile

The study aims to investigate the scientific publication research productivity in Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science for a period of selected 7 years between 2008 and 2014. The findings of the study revealed that the highest number of author productivity of this research 74 (2.64%) were published in the year 2011. Out of 142 articles, 19.71% were the highest number of articles which were published in 2011 and the lowest number 9.86% of research articles published in the year 2014. The study investigated the rank wise distributions of contribution in which the majority of 31.84% contributions from Malaysia which is the first position, followed by 11.31% were contributed by Iran is the second rank and 11.01% of contributions came from India is the third position, and 7.15% of contributions came from China etc. The scientometric tools such as degree of collaboration, collaborative index, annual growth rate, and relative growth rate were also used to analyze the data and interpretation.


INTRODUCTION
For the study purpose, Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science (MJLIS) have been taken into account as a source journal.The first issue of volume 1 and number I was published in July 1996.Since its inception, MJLIS has served like medium to publish research papers in LIS filed and also provides a forum for communication among LIS professionals and to introduce new concepts, systems and technology.This publication was published in print, as well as electronic during the period between 1996 and 2008.But, from the year 2009 onward, it has been published via electronic form and indexed and abstracted by various databases.As we have selected MJLIS of as a source journal to analyze bibliometric study, we have also taken as a secondary source for research purpose which had already done by eminent authors in the same journals in different duration.For this study, we have chosen selected 7 years to investigate the growth rate and collaborative research work and many more features.

RELATED WORK
Obviously, a huge number of studies have been conducted to analyze and interpret the trends in collaborative authorship not only library and information science but also in different disciplines.Some related literatures have been taken into account for under study.Falagas, Papastamataki and Bliziotis (2006) [1] evaluated the publication productivity of parasitology in various parts of the world of the PubMed database during the year 1995-2003.The results of the study showed that the research trends in connection with gross domestic product, national income and population of each region.He, Luo and Lu (2009) [2] have investigated on biological invasion research articles using WOS for the duration of 1991 and 2006.The study analysis revealed that the maximum number of research productivity in country wise were USA.Li et al (2014) [3] analyzed the research on acidophilic organism during the past thirty years based on bibliometric method and the results revealed that acidophilic microorganism had significantly increased and the economic conditions had an important effect on academic development.Arya and Sharma (2011) [4] have analyzed the authorship research and collaborative work in the field of veterinary science throughout the global particularly in India for period of five years.The collected data were evaluated using database CABI Abstracts.It was found that the study of collaborative research was private and DC was 0.84.The study was also found based on the subject and results indicated that the huge number of research in the field of animal nutrition and veterinary physiology.
Chang, (2009) [5] used the bibliometric techniques in his paper, a bibliometric analysis of Asian Authorship pattern in JASIST during the period between 1981 and 2005.For data analysis, 1869 articles had taken into account in which 3, 422 frequencies of authorship in JASIST during the time of study.The findings of the study revealed that Asian information science research has progressed towards the international standard since 2001 due to growth of frequency of co-authorship and increase of collaborative countries.The results also showed that the Japanese scientists were eager to carry out their research work individually and also collaborated their colleagues in the same country.Hood and Wilson (2001) [10] investigated the overview of the literature outputs in Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, and Informetrics subject areas.
To estimate the scholarly papers of five years with combined fields and annual publications count was about 300 records.The findings showed that no doubt these terms would be very useful to conduct further study in future.Nalimov, Adler and Granovsky (1966) [11] have reported a number of studies in connection with scientometrics analyses in his book namely Information systems in the mathematical theory of experiment.They analyzed the various factors such as citation analysis, authorship pattern, impact factors of scientific articles etc. Velmurugan (2013) [12] discussed the bibliometric study on Annals of Library and Information Science for the year 2007-2012.He found and reported the analysis based on the study that the maximum outputs found in 2010 and the single authors were predominant compare with multi-authors during the period of study.The collaborative range was 0.57-0.82and the average degree of collaboration was 0.64.Velmurugan (2013) [13] examined the literature outputs on Intellectual Property Rights Journal during 2007-2012.The study explored the collaborative research work, literature trends, citation trends and other features during the period of study.Velmurugan (2014) [14] focused the research trends in IJPAP.The study was con-ducted with 546 contributions published in the journal selected four years for a period between January, 2009 and December 2012.The findings of the results revealed that the maximum number of contributions i.e., 149 (27.29 %) were published in the year 2012 whereas the minimum number of 121 (22.17 %) was published in the year 2011.The highest number of author productivity i.e., 420 (6.56) were published in the year 2010.Further, investigated the study based on the scientometrics on Annals of Library and Information Science between 2007 and 2012.
Velmurugan (2013) [15] collected 203 research outputs and mathematically analyzed as per the data.The findings of the study identified that the highest number of scientific articles 21.19 percent in the year 2010 and the least amount of papers were 13.31 percent in 2012 and also noticed that the most of the contributions are found by two authors i.e. 43.35 percent.Velmurugan (2014) [16] described the pattern of authorship and collaborative research on Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Physics for the year 2009 -2012.The study discussed the various factors such as year wise, author wise, volume wise, issue wise distribution of contributions during the period of study.The study used the scientometric indicators such as DC, RGR, and DT to measure the data.Velmurugan and Radhakrishnan (2014) [17] have carried out the scientometric study on IETE Technical Review Journal during the period of 6 years between 2007and 2012 and the results represented that degree of collaboration was high and the relative growth rate has been increased and the doubling time was decreased while measuring during the period of study.Tsay (2011) [18] evaluated the research trends of the scientific publications of Journal of Information Science during the year 1998-2008.The study investigated the page by page and different variables include such as journal articles review articles and short communications and book reviews, abstracts, news items, conference papers, and editorials were excluded for analysis.He found the total data was 499 articles and 16, 320 citations and average citations per paper were 1, 484.Bonnevie (2003) [19] expressed his view and analyzed the study on multifaceted portrait of a library and information science journal and examined the different parameters such as pattern of authorship, citation impact, self-citation of articles etc. the results found that 2,140 scientific publications in the LISA and SSCI with 42.6 percent and 57.4 percent respectively.Tsay (2008) [20] reported the relationship between journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology in short JASIST and other disciplines by way of citation analysis.The various databases such as WorldCat and LISA were used to collect the data from Ulrich's Periodical Directory, Library of Congress Subject Heading.The variables were analyzed such as main class and subject of cited journals and books.The results revealed that the JASIST scholarly papers doubles in production ratio and the average number of references cited per paper has been increased 2 to 3 times in 25 years.In this study, an attempt has been made to determine the bibliometric/scientometric analysis with special reference to authorship pattern and collaborative research work on Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science (MJLIS) selected seven years for a period between 2008 and 2014.

OBJECTIVES
The major objectives are as follows:

METHODOLOGY
The required data collected from the official website of MJLIS for the purpose of current study in which 142 contributions made from volume 13 in 2008 to volume 19 in 2014.All retrieved and collected data were subsequently examined, observed, analyzed, and tabulated for making observations.The bibliometric statistical tools and techniques such as Subramanyam's [6] DC in quantitative terms CI and AGR so as to arrive the appropriate results.This journal was first published in 1996 and available online in the year 1999 onward.It publishes original research papers covers emerging areas and for the present study the limited to seven volumes and 142 research papers published from 2008 to 2014.

Year wise distribution of articles
For this study, total numbers of 142 papers published have been taken into consideration that shows from the Table 1 and Figure 1

Authorship pattern
Table 3 and Figure 2 represents that the maximum number of the research articles were published by double authors 56 (39.44%), followed by single author 35 (24.65%), and the minimum number of contributions were published by five authors that is, 3 (2.11%).We observed from the study that the majority of papers were published by multi-authors.

Single and co-authorship pattern
Table 4 and Figure 3 shows that the details about the authorship pattern of single and joint contributions during the period of study.The maximum numbers (75.36%) of contributions were by joint authors and the rest of 28 (24.64%)contributions were by a single author.

Authorship productivity
It can be observed from the Table 5 depicts that the analysis associated with author productivity of MJLIS that identified the entire average number of authors per paper that is, 2.36 and the average productivity per author is 0.42.The highest number of author productivity that is, 74 (2.64) were published in the year 2011.articles published per year throughout the time of study between 16 and 28.We noted that the growth of literature output has been increased from 2008 to 2011 after that the range of growth has been decreased gradually from 2012 onward.

Annual growth rate
The growth rate is a measurement which is essential in any field.In meaning the growth of the number of publications in a particular discipline, this is often a measure of the annual increase or decrease.Here, the AGR has been determined as per the formula given below.In our study, the end value is 18 in the year 2009, the first value is 16 in the year The per capita publication works out to 1.32.
Table 6 represents the data about the single and multiauthored papers.A total of 35 papers (24.64%) have been contributed by a single author and 107 contributions (75.36%) by multiple authors.It is observed that the maximum amount of offerings made by multi-authored papers.

Degree of collaboration
The DC is defined as the ratio of the number of collaborative research papers to the total number of research papers in the discipline during a certain period of time.
It is expressed as: Where, C -is the DC in a discipline, N m -Is the number of multi-authored research papers in the discipline published during a year, N s -Is the number of single-authored papers in the discipline published during the same year.Using this formula, the DC is determined.
The formula is where,    Hence, the DC in MJLIS journal is 0.75.The distribution of DC from 2008 to 2014 is presented in Table 7 and Figure 4.The same research had been done by Amsaveni and Vasanthi [7] found that the DC value was 0.95 as a whole, and the collaborative trends were high.

Collaboration index
It is a mean number of authors per joint paper.For this analysis, we have omitted the single authored papers which are equal to 1 always.To determine the mean number of authors per joint authored paper, the following formula has been used.The same formula has already been used by Elango and Rajendran [8] in their scientometric study on authorship trends and collaboration pattern in the marine sciences literature during the year 2012 based on Lawani, [9] described about the bibliometric correlates of quality in scientific research in the year 1986.8 and Figure 5 provides the year wise mean number of authors per joint authored paper.CI ranges from 1.12 (2008) to 4.5 (2013) with an average of 3.05 per joint authored paper.

Institution wise distribution of articles
Researchers have taken measure to analyses on institution wise collaboration in terms of publishing scientific research articles during the period of study.In such a way, Table 10 and Figure 6 depicts the status of the research output and according to that the maximum number 122 (85.92%) of research publication were published by academic institutions such as universities, colleges, and schools and the minimum number 5 (3.53%) were published by special institutions.

Subject wise distribution of articles
Table 11 and Figure 7 examines the subject wise distribution of publications which were produced during the stipulated period.This study identifies the authors' interest and involvement of subjects in terms of producing the publication in their respective specialization.The findings of the study reveal that the highest number 47 (33.09%) of scientific scholarly publications were published in the subject of bibliometrics and scientometrics study due to the rapid growth of development in the area that the majority of authors are very much interested to do their research work and followed by 9.85% of papers were from academic libraries and 8.46% of papers were from user studies and the mere number only 2 (i.e., 1.40%) of articles were published from cataloguing and classification.

FINDINGS
The major findings of the study are as follows: • publications were published in the subject of bibliometrics and scientometrics study, followed by 9.85% of papers were from academic libraries, 8.46% of papers were from user studies, and the mere number only 2 (i.e., 1.40%) of articles were published from cataloguing and classification.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
MJLIS is one of the leading scholarly peer-reviewed journal in the field of LIS.As this journal is an open access journal in the field of LIS, it is wide range of familiar and has publishing significant scholarly articles to cater to the needs of the for user community such as students, faculty members, and information professionals in the field of LIS.This journal covers bibliometrics/scientometric studies, user studies, information sources and services, digital libraries, LIS education, academic libraries, public libraries, special libraries, school libraries and children libraries, internet based studies, collection development, information literacy, cataloguing and classification, libraries and information professionals, information retrieval, infor mation management, knowledge management, and related legal issues in the field of LIS.Based on the study, it was found that the maximum numbers of articles were published in 2011.It was identified that the highest numbers of contributions were by joint authors and the lowest contributions were by a single author.Finally, it was noticed that the most of the researchers used the citations from journals articles due to the fact that journal articles are the premier vehicle of emerging information dissemination.

•
To identify the year wise distribution of articles during the studied period • To estimate the annual growth rate (AGR) of articles • To examine the authorship pattern of papers • To find out the author productivity of MJLIS • To study the authorship pattern of single and co-author articles • To describe the year wise single versus multi-authored papers • To measure the AGR, DC, and collaborative index (CI) of MJLIS • To analyze the country wise distribution of papers during the studied period • To notice institution wise distribution of articles • To know about the subject wise distribution of articles and • To investigate the year wise contributions of citation during the studied period.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Year wise distribution of articles

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: Authorship pattern of solo-and co-authorship contributions

C
= Degree of collaboration N m = Number of multiple authors N s = Number of single authors In this study, the value of C is  0 75 C .

Figure 6 :Figure 8 :
Figure 6: Institution wise distribution of papers

Table 3 : Authorship pattern Pattern Total number of contributions Cumulative value (%)
Table 2 provides the AGR of the number of research articles for the period between 2008 and 2014.The formula is given by:

Table 2
shows that the year on the change in the number of documents was 12.5% in 2009, 33.33% over the respective next year.It indicates that the negative change of −28.57% in 2012 and an increase of 33.33% in the year 2010.The average AGR is 1.2617%.The same research work was done by Li in his paper entitled, a longitudinal analysis of nanotechnology literature, 1976-2004 in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research.

Table 5 : Author productivity of MJLIS
*AAPP=Number of authors/number of papers, Productivity per author=Number of papers/number of authors.AAPP=Average authors per paper, MJLIS=Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science.

Table 12 : Contributions of citations
The average number of authors per paper that is, 2.36 and the average productivity per author is 0.42.The highest number of author productivity that is, 74 (2.64) were published in the year 2011 • The DC in MJLIS journal was 0.75 during the period between 2008 and 2014 • The majority of 31.84%contributions from Malaysia which is the first position, followed by 11.31% were contributed by Iran is the second rank, 11.01% of contributions came from India is the third position, and 7.15% of contributions came China, etc. • The maximum number of citations were 826 (19.25%) in the year 2010 whereas, the minimum number of citations were 395 (9.20%) in the year 2008 • The highest number 47 (33.09%) of scientific scholarly