A Quantitative Analysis of Selected Freely Available Electronic Publications in Information Science and Related Fields

The term bibliometrics was coined by Alan Pritchard in 1969 and was explored in his article Statistical Bibliography. (Pendam and Tripude, 2011). It is a combination of two words 'Biblio' and 'Metrics'. The term Biblio is derived from the combination of Latin and Greek word 'biblion' means books whereas the term Metrics is derived from Latin or Greek word 'Metricus' or Metrikos which means measurement.(Dhiman,2000). According to Pritchard, (1969) it deals with the application of mathematics and statistical methods to books and other media of communication. Bibliometrics is a set of statistical and mathematical tools and techniques devoted to the quantitative analysis of scientific and technical activities of researcher's contributions to science and technical development used in Library and Information Science. (Rostaing, Barts & Leveille, 2007). Bibliometric studies include the literature growth of specific subjects i.e. how much literature has been contributed by individuals, institutions and countries. In the web era bibliometric techniques prove to be fruitful to the researchers in order to quantify the data with the help of mathematical and statistical tools by measuring the literature output of particular subject in terms of language, demographic, institution etc. (Amuddhavalli, 1997).

History of Bibliometrics

Historical Development of Bibliometrics was formulated by Lotka, Gross, Bradford, Mandelbrot, Brookes, Narin, Garfield, Vickery, Moravesik, Cole brothers, Pritchard, Dobrov, Vlachy, Hulme, Fairthorne and others. The foremost study on Bibliometrics was performed by Cole and Eales in 1917 and was published in the journal Science Progress. In their study they analyzed the publications in Comparative Anatomy by counting the number of titles, books and journals articles from 1543-1860. (Cole and Eales,1917).The study was further progressed by E.Wyndham Hulme in 1923 who introduced the term Statistical Bibliography, analyzed and indexed the journal articles in English International Catalogue of Scientific Literature on the basis of productivity.(Hulme,1923).The