Bibliometric analysis of indian pulp and paper technical association journal (2005-2019)

IPPTA (Indian Pulp and Paper Technical Association) Journal is a well-known journal in the Indian pulp and paper fraternity with a publishing history of fifty-five years. This study presents a bibliometric overview of articles published in the IPPTA Journal during 2005-2019. This is the first bibliometric study of a journal completely dedicated to pulp and paper research. The bibliometric analysis included analysis of article distribution, subject classification, authorship pattern, author productivity and collaboration, geographical distribution, references, keywords, prominent institutions, and citations. It also accounts for Lotka's law of scientific productivity, relative growth rate, doubling time, frequently contributing authors and top-cited articles. It was found that during this period 830 articles were published in IPPTA Journal. The average number of articles published per year in the journal is ~56. A total of 2361 authors from 27 countries and 339 unique institutes were identified in these articles. These articles contained 1009 unique keywords, used 5968 references, and received 561 citations. 74.10% of articles were contributed by joint authors. Out of the total 5968 references cited in this journal during the period of study, 48.51% were sourced from journal articles. The overall degree of collaboration, modified collaboration coefficient, average author per article, productivity per article, and collaboration index were calculated to be 0.7410, 0.5030, 2.8446, 0.3515, and 3.8390, respectively. Nonetheless, highlighting various interesting features, this analysis also detected certain inadequacies that need to be resolved for further improvement of this journal.