DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, 2014–2023: A Bibliometric and VOSviewer Mapping Study

Bibliometrics — measuring publications, authors, citations and topics with quantitative methods — is one of the most common M.Lib dissertation choices, and one of the most commonly done badly: a few tables of papers per year and a pie chart of countries. This dissertation shows how to do it properly for a single, well-defined source: DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology (DJLIT), published by DESIDOC, DRDO, and indexed in Scopus, for the ten years 2014–2023.

The study exports the journal's records from Scopus, cleans them (author-name variants, document types, keyword synonyms) and computes standard indicators in Excel: annual growth and relative growth rate, authorship pattern, degree of collaboration and collaboration index, geographical and institutional distribution, most-cited papers and citation distribution. It tests whether author productivity follows Lotka's law using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov goodness-of-fit test.

For science mapping it uses VOSviewer to build a co-authorship network (authors and countries) and a keyword co-occurrence map that shows the journal's thematic clusters and how they shift across the decade. Biblioshiny is an optional cross-check. The dissertation interprets the results for Indian LIS research — who writes, how they collaborate and what topics dominate — and critically discusses the limits of Scopus-based bibliometrics.

Abstract

Journal-level bibliometric studies describe a field's publishing patterns through a single important source. This study analyses ten years (2014–2023) of articles in DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology using Scopus data. It measures growth, authorship and collaboration, tests Lotka's law of author productivity, identifies highly cited papers and maps co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence networks with VOSviewer. The results describe the structure and themes of Indian LIS research as reflected in the journal.

Introduction

DJLIT has been published by DESIDOC, DRDO, for decades and is one of the Indian LIS journals indexed in Scopus. Its contributors include LIS faculty, research scholars and practitioners across India and other countries, which makes it a reasonable window into Indian LIS research trends.

Review of literature (gap)

Many bibliometric studies of Indian LIS journals exist, but a large share stop at descriptive counts. Fewer combine classical laws (Lotka's law with a proper goodness-of-fit test), collaboration measures and science mapping for a recent decade that includes the move to digital libraries, research data, and pandemic-era topics. This dissertation fills that gap for DJLIT for 2014–2023.

Research questions

1. How has the number of articles changed from 2014 to 2023?
2. What is the authorship pattern, degree of collaboration and collaboration index?
3. Which countries and institutions contribute most?
4. Does author productivity fit Lotka's law?
5. Which papers are most cited, and how are citations distributed?
6. What thematic clusters appear in keyword co-occurrence, and how do they change over time?

Feasibility

• Data: Scopus access through the university library or INFLIBNET's e-resource arrangements; exports in CSV and RIS are sufficient.
• Tools: VOSviewer is free; Excel is available; Biblioshiny runs in R and is optional.
• Time: data cleaning is the longest task, about three to four weeks.
• Ethics: only published bibliographic data is used.

Indian library and information science research is published across several national journals, but systematic, up-to-date evidence on who publishes, how they collaborate and what they write about is limited, and many existing journal-level studies are descriptive only. For the discipline's teachers, editors and research scholars, it is useful to know whether research is becoming more collaborative, which institutions and countries contribute, whether productivity is concentrated among a few authors, and which themes are rising or fading.

The problem this dissertation addresses is: what are the growth, authorship, collaboration, citation and thematic patterns of articles published in DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology from 2014 to 2023, and does author productivity follow Lotka's law? The study must use transparent data cleaning and standard indicators so that the results can be verified and repeated.

In scope

• One journal (DJLIT), publication years 2014–2023, document types article and review (others reported separately).
• Data from Scopus only; citations as recorded by Scopus on the date of export.
• Descriptive indicators, Lotka's law, citation analysis, co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence mapping.

Out of scope

• Comparison with other databases' citation counts (mentioned as a limitation).
• Full-text content analysis.
• Evaluating the quality of individual papers or authors.

The study uses a quantitative bibliometric design with science-mapping techniques.

Indicators: relative growth rate RGR = (ln W2 − ln W1) / (T2 − T1) and doubling time Dt = 0.693 / RGR; degree of collaboration DC = Nm / (Nm + Ns) (Subramanyam); collaboration index CI = total authors / total papers. Lotka's law: yx = C / x^n, with n estimated from the data (least squares on log–log values) and fit checked with the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test at the 0.05 level. Mapping: full counting for co-authorship, association-strength normalisation (VOSviewer default), minimum keyword occurrences chosen and reported so that the map stays readable.