DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology

Cover Page

2025-07-15

Measuring Scholarly Communication in the Era of Data Science

Manoj Kumar Verma — 2025-07-15

Over the past century, methods of evaluating scholarly communication have advanced significantly from basic publication counts to sophisticated, data-driven analyses that provide a more nuanced understanding of research impact.In the early 20thcentury, Librametricsemerged and focusing primarily on quantitative assessments of library collections, usage patterns, and housekeeping operations. This gradually led to Bibliometricsin the 1960s, which introduced more systematic approaches to evaluating research through citation analysis and journal impact factors. Soon after, Scientometrics developed to specifically measure science research output, analyzing growth patterns in scientific literature and collaboration networks. These traditional metrics served as the gold standard for decades, providing what was then considered an objective measure of scholarly influence and productivity. However, as the academic landscape expanded and digital technologies revolutionized how knowledge is created and shared, it became increasingly clear that these conventional methods offered only a partial view of research impact, often overlooking important dimensions of scholarly communication. The informetrics expanded the scope to study all forms of information related to scholarly communication under one umbrella. Because of digital revolution and emergence of website and digital platforms, a new metric tool Webometrics (or Cybermetrics) was emerged in 1990s to measure web-based scholarly activity. This was crucial as more research moved to digital platforms.

The Pivotal Role of Bibliometric Analysis in Scholarly Communication

Raju Vaishya — 2025-07-15

This review article highlights the pivotal role of bibliometric analysis in enhancing scholarly communication amid the exponential growth of academic literature. Traditional literature review methods are unable to keep pace with the vast increase in research output, thus requiring innovative approaches to analyse and interpret bibliographic data. The study elucidates how bibliometric analysis employs advanced statistical techniques to identify significant patterns in research output, collaboration dynamics, and individual research impacts within the academic community. Key findings indicate that the development of prominent scientific databases, such as scopus and web of science, alongside various bibliometric software and visualisation tools, has bolstered the capacity for systematic analysis. The paper delineates two main types of bibliometric analysis: performance analysis, which assesses the contributions of various research stakeholders, and science mapping, which explores the relationship networks among authors and concepts. The insights derived from bibliometric studies are invaluable for funding agencies, academic institutions, and policymakers, facilitating informed strategic decision-making and fostering a culture of evidence-based research practices. The findings illustrate bibliometric analysis’s transformative potential for enhancing knowledge management and collaboration across disciplines.

Testing the Applicability of Lotka’s Law, Bradford’s Law, and Zipf’s Law on Gastritis Research Output

Amir Amanullah — 2025-07-15

This study investigates the applicability of the fundamental bibliometric laws-Lotka’s Law, Bradford’s Law, and Zipf’s Law-within the domain of Gastritis research. Utilising data from the Web of Science Core Collection, a total of 19,856 records on Gastritis research were analysed using various scientometric tools and statistical tests.Lotka’s Law, which models author productivity, was tested through the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test and the Chi-Square test which confirmed significant discrepancies between the observed and expected distributions of publications. Bradford’s Law, applied to journal productivity and article scattering, revealed a deviation from the anticipated 1:α:α² ratio. Zipf’s Law was validated through an analysis of the most frequently used terms and the results demonstrated an inverse relationship between rank and frequency, supporting the applicability of Zipf’s Law to the Gastritis research corpus.

A Decade of Social Issues Research in India

Manorama Tripathi — 2025-07-15

Universities and research centres serve as epicentres of knowledge in any society, aiding policymakers in the formulation and implementation of policies based on research findings. This study examines doctoral theses on social issues awarded at Indian higher education institutions between 2011 and 2020, focusing on dominant themes and their temporal evolution. Topic modeling, specifically Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) implemented in Python, was applied to analyse 448 theses downloaded from Shodhganga, a national repository. The analysis identified nine dominant themes, with the largest proportion (15.40 %) addressing child and gender issues, followed by 13.84 % on corporate, political, and legal challenges. Theses on social development and education accounted for 12.72 %, while 10.94 % focused on political issues in social development. Other topics included social identities, government policies, rural development, corporate social responsibility, and adolescent stress. The findings highlight the central role of child and gender-related issues in doctoral research, with shifting focuses over time in response to socio-political changes. Themes such as rural development and women’s economic roles fluctuated, while social development and gender dynamics showed consistent growth. This study underscores the evolving academic priorities and potential gaps between academic research and societal needs, offering insights for future research directions in social issues.

Mapping the Landscape

Efren M. Torres — 2025-07-15

This study presents a scoping review of the research on internal communication practices in libraries, highlighting publication trends, methodological approaches, thematic focus, and research gaps. Based on 27 documents published between 2001 and 2023, the study identifies key trends through bibliometric mapping and thematic analysis. Findings reveal a significant focus on library communication and management, underscoring its pivotal role in enhancing organisational efficiency and staff engagement. However, topics like modern communication tools are underexplored, with artificial intelligence, social media, and mobile platforms notably absent. Research is largely concentrated in the United States, with minimal global representation. Qualitative approaches, particularly case studies, dominate the field, with limited use of quantitative and mixed methods. Future research should adopt interdisciplinary approaches, integrate emerging technologies, and expand global perspectives to address evolving communication needs. This review offers an exploratory mapping of the field to guide future research and strategic communication practices in libraries.

Global Trends and Future Prospects in Research Support Services

Anudha Lepcha — 2025-07-15

This study investigates the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on research support services through a scientometric analysis of global trends and future directions. The analysis draws on data retrieved from the Scopus database, covering 199 publications from 2015 to 2024. By analysing publication growth, citation patterns, subject-wise distribution, geographic contributions, and collaboration networks, the study highlights AI’s expanding role in academia. Findings reveal a significant rise in publications from 2015 to 2024, with education as the dominant field. While citation trends indicate scholarly influence, Altmetrics show limited public engagement. Co-authorship analysis identifies strong regional ties but weak interdisciplinary and international collaboration. Keyword mapping highlights key AI applications in research support. The study suggests that promoting global collaboration, encouraging interdisciplinary approaches, and utilising social media may further support the effective integration of AI into research support services, enhancing their efficiency and accessibility.

Open Access Adoption in Sustainable Development Goals Research Among the Indian Leading Universities

Swagota Saikia — 2025-07-15

The present study aims to analyze Open Access (OA) research on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the five leading central universities of India from 2015 to 2024. The data has been obtained from the Web of Science, and further analysis is carried out using bibliometric and Altmetric indicators. The study seeks to trace the decadal growth of research, identify prolific authors and sources, assess the impact of influential works, and determine the leading SDG goals with the highest research output. The results reveal that the University of Delhi has the highest OA contribution to SDG research, with Scientific Reports emerging as the most prolific journal. The growth rate of OA research has shown a decline in 2023 and 2024. The University Grants Commission (UGC) is identified as the top research funder in this field. The Green route is found to be the most preferred mode of OA publishing for SDG research, followed by the Gold route. Among the different areas of SDGs, SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) has the highest research output, followed by SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being). The study highlights the vital role of central universities in advancing OA research aligned with national SDG goals. The findings can guide institutions and policymakers to strengthen OA practices and support evidence-based sustainable development.

Enhancing Sampling of Papers Through an Interactive Shiny Tool for Bibliometric Analysis and Systematic Reviews

Mayank Yuvaraj — 2025-07-15

This paper presents a novel interactive tool for sampling papers in bibliometric analysis and systematic reviews, integrating keyword frequency analysis and semantic similarity ranking. Built using R Shiny, the application enables researchers to prioritize academic abstracts through a dual-method approach systematically: Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weighted keyword matching, and Cosine similarity-based semantic alignment with user-defined queries. A dynamic weighting mechanism enhances the hybrid approach, outperforming traditional methods by balancing lexical precision with contextual depth. The tool addresses critical challenges in quantitative literature review processes by introducing data-driven thresholding with three-tier prioritisation (green/orange/red categories) and export functionalities. In test cases, the hybrid approach classified 2.29 % of papers as highly relevant using keyword analysis and 1.47 % using semantic similarity on an AI in libraries dataset, with broader coverage (58.45% moderately relevant) in hybrid mode, demonstrating its ability to identify contextually aligned works efficiently. Technical implementation details, mathematical foundations, and applications are discussed. The tool supports extracting relevant papers from a dataset drawn from Web of Science, Scopus, OpenAlex, and Dimensions.

Research Trends in Virtual Assistants

Rajdeep Choudhury — 2025-07-15

Virtual assistants have become integral to personal and professional spheres, demonstrating their utility in various domains such as e-commerce, social media, and administrative tasks. This study examines research trends and new themes in virtual assistant research from 2014 to 2024 using a scientometric technique in conjunction with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). It analyses global publication trends, prominent authors, prolific sources, and important study subjects like artificial intelligence, conversational agents, and human-centered studies based on 8,079 Scopus-indexed papers. An annual publication growth rate of 33.87 % reflects rising interest in this domain. Four main themes emerged from topic modeling: healthcare applications, user-centric conversational AI, educational technology, and AI-driven information systems and chatbots. Terms like “chatgpt”, “education” and “patients” indicate a variety of applications, and the Inter-topic Distance Map and saliency-based analysis highlight theme similarities and contrasts. The report offers a thorough analysis of the changing field of virtual assistant research, providing insightful information for further investigation and advancement in this ever-evolving area.

Measuring the Online Presence and Research Visibility of Indian Library and Information Science Educators

Subham Giri — 2025-07-15

This study investigates the online presence and research visibility of full-time Library and Information Science (LIS) educators in India, using google scholar data to analyse citation metrics, publication outputs, and collaborative networks. By adopting a scientometric and bibliometric approach, the research ranks the top 20 most productive LIS educators and identifies the most-cited publications, offering insights into influential research themes within the field. Key findings reveal that Prof. Manoj Kumar Verma stands out for his exceptional productivity, averaging 20.68 publications per year over just 16 years, with a total of 331 publications, the highest number of Google Scholar-indexed publications among all current LIS educators serving in state and central universities. This highlights his rapid and impactful scholarly contributions. Emerging scholars Prof. Thanuskodi S and Prof. Madhusudhan Margam showcase high productivity, with Prof. Thanuskodi leading in total citations (2,703) and annual citations (180.2), highlighting India’s dynamic LIS research landscape. They lead in key metrics such as total citations, g-index, h-index, and i10-index, underscoring their influential contributions to the field. The study provides valuable insights into research trends, collaborative strengths, and thematic focuses, offering guidance for policymakers and institutions to enhance global research visibility and innovation in LIS education in India.

Mapping the Landscape of Disability Research in India

Mukesh Behera — 2025-07-15

Research on developmental impairments is more widespread in wealthy countries, but the global rise in developmental disorders reveals an extensive impaired community in India. This study takes a scientometric approach to Indian disability research, focussing on publication patterns and trends in the SCOPUS database. A search retrieved 12,320 research papers from 1945 to 2023, which were analysed using co-citation, coupling, co-authorship, and co-occurrence approaches to explore links between research. India contributed 12,320 publications (2.42 %) to the global total of 509,520, while the United States and the United Kingdom led with 32.83 % and 11.40 %, respectively. India’s annual growth rate in disability-related publications was 9.95 %, while international cooperation remained restricted. The most productive and significant Indian institutions were AIIMS, NIMHANS, PGIMER Chandigarh, and Manipal Academy of Higher Education. These findings highlight India’s significant contribution to disability research while emphasising the need for greater global alliances and increased efforts to address its specific difficulties.

What Indians are Talking About LIS Research on X

Vysakh. C — 2025-07-15

The present study aims to measure user sentiments while conversing about Library and Information Science (LIS) research on X; previously, Twitter (‘X’ and ‘Twitter’ are used interchangeably throughout the paper). The study also aimed to estimate the webometric and altmetric features of the LIS scholarly outputs regarding citations, altmetric scores, and Twitter metrics. Altmetric.com served as the primary source of data collection. Using an instant data scraper, the tweets and retweets were extracted and subjected to sentiment analysis in Orange text mining software. The study revealed 102,221 LIS outputs were indexed in the Altmetric Explorer, and 62995 outputs had social web attention. Twitter mentions were more prevalent for recent LIS publications. Geographically, 237 countries globally discussed LIS research on the X platform. The highest mentions came from English-speaking countries, such as the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK), with 87,969 and 44,356 mentions, respectively. As far as India was concerned, only 1925 LIS articles were mentioned. The sentiment analysis discovered that most of the Tweets were neutral. The study proved that early tweets can predict later citations for LIS research. The study’s findings give insights to the scholarly community on the scientific progress of the LIS domain by assessing public opinion on the X platform.

An Altmetric Examination of Artificial Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence

Sakshi Tiwari — 2025-07-15

This study examines the altmetric analysis of AI and EI literature. The Scopus database was chosen to extract the documents, 228 documents were selected. Among 228 documents, the top 100 articles were selected based on Scopus citation for data analysis. SPSS, MS Excel, and RStudio were used for data analysis. The results indicate a steady growth of annual publications. Sustainability journal has the highest publication, IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence was the highly cited journal. Tohoku University was a highly productive institute. The USA was the most prominent country both quantitatively and in impact. The pearson correlation coefficient between NoA and JIF is weakly positive (0.069), while the relationship between NoA and citations is weakly positive (.034). The study found a moderate positive relationship between Journal Impact Factor and citations (0.537) and captures (0.572). There is a weak positive correlation between JIF and mentions (0.221) and social media (0.013). The study found a strong and significant correlation between citations and captures (0.759), weak negative correlation between citations and mentions (-0.010) and a weak positive correlation between citations and social media (0.008), a significant weak positive relationship between mentions and social media (0.317) and a weak negative correlation (-0.028) between mentions and captures. Likewise, social media demonstrates a weak positive correlation with captures (0.105).

Mapping of Emerging Technological Trends in Library and Information Science

Rajeevan M S — 2025-07-15

The study investigates the technological evolution of Library and Information Science (LIS) research by applying Sentiment Analysis (SA), Topic Modeling (TM) and Network Analysis (NA). The study seeks to trace sentiment changes, primary themes in the research and collaboration throughout LIS research globally. A dataset of 918 publications indexed in Scopus (2000-2024) was analysed. Sentiment analysis used VADER for sentiment scoring (positive, negative, and neutral), applied LDA and BERTopic for the topic modeling and used Neo4j based knowledge graphs to map collaboration between institutions. Overall results indicate a predominately positive sentiment regarding AI and digital libraries; while automation drew mixed sentiment. The topic modeling represent five themes depicting digital transformations within library and information science. The analysis of networks revealed which institutions contributed strongly to the body of research. Wuhan University and Florida Atlantic University emerged as collaboration hubs. Differences in cross-institutional collaboration networks were found, with different levels of centrality of other institutions across geographic contexts. Limitations include the use of only abstracts in English that does not include grey literature. The findings provide evidence of how LIS research is framed by technology trends and networks of scholars. The research study provides a conceptual framework for new studies using computational bibliometrics in LIS.

Exploring Gender Disparities in Scholarly Communication Metrics within Digital Library Research

Mohammad Nazim — 2025-07-15

This study investigates gender disparities in scholarly communication in digital library research over 30 years from 1993-2022, focusing on authorship roles, citation metrics, external funding, and open-access publishing. A bibliometric approach was adopted, analysing 831 publications extracted from the Core Collection database of Web of Science. The gender of the first, last, and sole authors was identified using the Gender API and supplementary online searches. Statistical tests, including the Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks test, Independent Samples t-test, and Chi-Square test, were employed to examine gender differences in citation metrics, access to research funding, and open-access publishing across different authorship positions. The findings reveal persistent gender disparities, with male authors dominating senior authorship positions and high-impact publications. However, female first authors demonstrated competitive citation metrics and a slight advantage in open-access publishing. Geographical analysis showed varying levels of gender parity across countries, with the USA, Spain, and England exhibiting a balanced gender distribution, where female authors’ contributions are nearly equal to those of male authors. Despite progress toward gender equity, challenges remain in access to funding and leadership roles. The findings highlight the need for institutional policies that promote equitable access to research funding and address the barriers that hinder women from securing financial support for their research endeavors.

Open Data in Social Sciences

Sanjay Kar — 2025-07-15

The rapid growth of data-driven research has elevated the prominence of data papers as a specialised scholarly publication format, which enhances data accessibility, transparency, and reproducibility in scientific research. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed data papers in social science, examining their growth, scholarly impact, adoption trends, mandates, policies, and funding landscape across the globe. Results show a 36 % annual growth rate (R² = 0.865), with 83 % of data papers published after 2021, driven by open-access mandates, funding agency requirements, digital repositories and growing emphasis on open science. The United States and China dominate publication volume, while Switzerland and the UK lead in citation impact. Despite a weak but significant open-access citation advantage (r = 0.052, p < 0.001), 22.7 % of data papers remain uncited, reflecting a “citation paradox.” Altmetric data highlights societal impact through media mentions (46 %), policy influence (36 %), patents (9 %) and engagement across social media platforms (X, Facebook, etc). Collaboration and funding patterns reveal entrenched Global North-South disparities, with 75 % of publications and 78 % of collaborative strength concentrated in the Global North. Only 42.5 % of journals enforce FAIR principles, and 35 % address CARE compliance, highlighting policy inconsistencies. To advance equitable open science, the study recommends standardised ethical frameworks, equitable funding models, and institutional support for global south scholars. These insights aim to strengthen data-sharing norms, promote research transparency, and foster inclusive collaboration.