Library and Information Science Research in Indian Universities: Growth, Core Journals, Keywords and Collaboration Patterns

This article maps Library and Information Science (LIS) research in Indian universities. As the two prominent citation databases, Web of Science and Scopus have very limited coverage of Indian LIS journals, the publications generated by the library and science departments of about 114 selected Indian universities and the two national institutions of importance in LIS research were extracted from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA). The relevant publication records were analyzed using scientometrics and Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools. The study traces the growth of publications, prominent keywords, leading journals where the articles are published and the institutional collaboration patterns of Indian university publications. The results show that there is a growth in scholarly publications from Indian universities in LIS. However, the numbers of publications are limited to only a few universities and national institutes of importance. The maximum LIS research outputs are published in Indian journals. Bibliometrics related investigations are the most important research areas. Located in major cities of India, the productive institutes show healthy collaboration. The study concludes with some observations which may be useful for formulating policies in LIS research in India.