Measuring global research activities using geographic data of scholarly article visits

Unveiling research productivity of premier IIMs of India (2010–2021)

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the research productivity in terms of publications count of the top four premiers Indian Institute of Management (IIM) institutions and to explore the current research trends.

Design/methodology/approach

Bibliometric techniques were employed to assess the performance in terms of research productivity of authors affiliated with IIMs. The Elsevier Scopus database was selected as a tool to extract the prospective publications data limiting the time frame for 2010–2021. The IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Calcutta and IIM-Lucknow have been selected for the study. The harvested data were analyzed by using the standard bibliometric indicators and scientometric parameters to measure the research landscape such as average growth rate, compound average growth rate, relative growth rate, doubling time, degree of collaboration, collaborative index, collaborative coefficient and modified collaborative coefficient. VOSviewer 1.6.17, BibExcel and Microsoft Excel were used for data analysis and visualization.

Findings

The research productivity of selected four IIMs has shown an upward trend during the study period from 2010–2021 and accrued 4,397 publications with an average of 366 publications per year. The authorship patterns demonstrate the collaborative trends as most of the publications were produced by the multiple-authors (81.03%). IIM-Ahmedabad has produced the maximum number of publications (32.20%). The research productivity of IIMs has come out in collaboration with the 125 nations across the world and the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany and China are the front runners with IIMs in the collaborative network. The high magnitude and density of collaboration are evident from the calculated mean values of the degree of collaboration (0.82). The mean values of the collaborative index (2.64), collaborative coefficient (0.51) and modified collaborative coefficient (0.51) demonstrated a positive trend, but indicate the fluctuation in the collaborative pattern as time proceeds.

Research limitations/implications

The study is limited to the publications data indexed in the Scopus database, therefore the outcome may not be generalized across other databases available in the public domain like Web of Science (WoS), PubMed, Dimensions and Google Scholars.

Practical implications

The findings of the study may aid academics and library professionals in identifying research trends, collaboration networks and evaluating other academic and research institutions by using the current advancement in data analysis.

Originality/value

The present study is the first effort to evaluate the research productivity of IIMs. The expanding literature will make an important contribution to identifying patterns and evaluating current research trends on a worldwide scale.

Article-Level Metrics

In the era of digitization and Open Access, article-level metrics are increasingly employed to distinguish influential research works and adjust research management strategies. Tagging individual articles with digital object identifiers allows exposing them to numerous channels of scholarly communication and quantifying related activities. The aim of this article was to overview currently available article-level metrics and highlight their advantages and limitations. Article views and downloads, citations, and social media metrics are increasingly employed by publishers to move away from the dominance and inappropriate use of journal metrics. Quantitative article metrics are complementary to one another and often require qualitative expert evaluations. Expert evaluations may help to avoid manipulations with indiscriminate social media activities that artificially boost altmetrics. Values of article metrics should be interpreted in view of confounders such as patterns of citation and social media activities across countries and academic disciplines.

Exploring the intellectual structure and evolution of 24 top business journals: a scientometric analysis

Purpose

This paper aims to present a longitudinal and visualizing study using scientometric approaches to depict the historical changes in the academic community, intellectual base and research hotspots within the business domain.

Design/methodology/approach

Two mapping methods are used, namely, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis. Both the co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis in this study are conducted using CiteSpace, a Java-based scientific visualization software.

Findings

This paper detects changes in academic communities in 24 business journals chosen by the University of Texas at Dallas as leading journals (UTD24) and identifies the research hotspots such as corporate governance, organizational research and capital research. Many authors and academic communities appear in two or even three periods, which indicates the lasting academic vitality of scholars in this field. This paper determines the evolution of scholars' research interests by identifying high-frequency keywords during the entire period.

Originality/value

This paper reveals a systematic and holistic picture of the developmental landscape of the business domain, which can provide a potential guide for future research. Furthermore, based on empirical data and knowledge visualization, the intellectual structure and evolution of the business domain can be identified more objectively.