CHAPTER – IV

RESEARCH DESIGN

4.0 INTRODUCTION

For any kind of research, the first and foremost thing is designing a

detailed methodology to carry out research which ultimately leads the researcher

in bringing out the study in a systematic manner. The present study is based on

empirical data, for which the detailed methodology has been designed. The

research design deals with the data collection source, method of data collection,

different bibliometric indicators like Growth Rate, Bradford’s Law, Lotka’s Law,

etc.

4.1 OBJECTIVES

The research was undertaken with the following objectives:

1. To identify and analyse the growth rate of literature among the faculties
National Institutes of Technology in India;

2. To examine the pattern of distribution of science research output of

faculties in National Institutes of Technology in India;

3. To measure and calculate the relative growth rate and doubling time for
publications using exponential growth model;

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 4. To analyse the type of co-authorship pattern and examine the extent of
research collaboration among different subjects of engineering and
technology in National Institutes of Technology in India;

5. To assess the institution-wise research concentration in different fields of

engineering and technology;

6. To apprehend and test the applicability of Lotka’s law of scientific

productivity of authors;

7. To identify the core journals of research output of faculties in National

Institutes of Technology in India using the Bradford’s law as an indicator
for the dispersion of engineering and technology research output;

8. To identify the geographic distribution of journals from which the

contributions of engineering and technology faculties get published;

9. To identify the areas of research concentration on different engineering

and technology fields among National Institutes of Technology in India;
and

10. To suggest a rational strategy for research and development in engineering

and technology fields among National Institutes of Technology in India
based on the findings of the study.

4.2 HYPOTHESES

In order to study the above mentioned objectives, the following hypotheses

were formulated and tested with appropriate statistical tools:

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 1. There is no significant relationship in the research output amongst
various National Institutes of Technology in India.

2. There is no significant relationship in various sources of publications

preferred by faculties of National Institutes of Technology in India.

3. There is no significant relationship in the authorship pattern of

publications made by the faculties of National Institutes of Technology
in India.

4. There is no significant relationship in contributions by the faculties of

various engineering and technology fields in National Institutes of
Technology in India.

4.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The period of study covers 10 years between 2001 and 2010. Twenty

National Institutes of Technology in India have been covered. The data collection

was limited to the bibliographical databases namely ISI Web of Science – Science

Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Scopus, and Ei-Compendex. A list of NITs

undertaken for the present study is provided below:

1. National Institutes of Technology, Agartala

2. National Institutes of Technology, Allahabad
3. National Institutes of Technology, Bhopal
4. National Institutes of Technology, Calicut
5. National Institutes of Technology, Durgapur
6. National Institutes of Technology, Hamirpur
7. National Institutes of Technology, Jaipur
8. National Institutes of Technology, Jalandhar

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 9. National Institutes of Technology, Jamshedpur
10. National Institutes of Technology, Kurukshetra
11. National Institutes of Technology, Nagpur
12. National Institutes of Technology, Patna
13. National Institutes of Technology, Raipur
14. National Institutes of Technology, Rourkela
15. National Institutes of Technology, Silchar
16. National Institutes of Technology, Srinagar
17. National Institutes of Technology, Surat
18. National Institutes of Technology, Surathkal
19. National Institutes of Technology, Tiruchirappalli
20. National Institutes of Technology, Warangal

4.4 DATA COLLECTION SOURCES

4.4.1 ISI Web of Science – Science Citation Index Expanded

(SCIE)

The data used for the present study were obtained from the ISI Web of

Science – Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). The Web of Science is an

online edition that combines the three databases SCI expanded (an SCI edition

with broader coverage), the SSCI and the ACHI in a unique on-line database

published from Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia. The SCIE

covers about 5900 journals whereas the SCI covers about 3500, the SSCI covers

1700 journals and 3300 journals selectively, the AHCI finally covers more than

1100 journals fully and about 7000 journals selectively. The WoS, in turn, is part

of the more comprehensive Web of Knowledge. The WoK comprises the above-

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mentioned ISI databases as well as the Derwent Innovations Index, BIOSIS

Previews, ISI Proceedings, CAB ABSTRACTS and INSPEC bibliographic and

patent databases.

4.4.2 SCOPUS

Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-

reviewed literature and quality web sources.

• It contains 41 million records, 70% with abstracts, nearly 18,000 titles

from 5,000 publishers worldwide, and 70% of content is pulled from

international sources

• It includes over 3 million conference papers

• It provides 100% Medline coverage

• It offers sophisticated tools to track, analyze and visualize research

4.4.3 EI-COMPENDEX

Compendex, the computerized version of the Engineering Index, is a

comprehensive engineering bibliographic database. Compendex is an index of

engineering materials started in 1884, compiled by hand under the original title of

Engineering Index. As Compendex it is now published by Elsevier. The name

"Compendex" stands for COMPuterized ENgineering inDEX. Compendex

currently contains over 9 million records and references over 5,000 international

sources including journals, conferences and trade publications. Approximately

500,000 new records are added to the database annually from over 190 disciplines

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and major specialties within the engineering field. Coverage is from 1969 to the

present, and is updated weekly.

Many subject areas of engineering are thoroughly represented including

nuclear technology, bioengineering, transportation, chemical and process

engineering, light and optical technology, agricultural engineering and food

technology, computers and data processing, applied physics, electronics and

communications, control, civil, mechanical, materials, petroleum, aerospace and

automotive engineering as well as multiple subtopics within all these and other

major engineering fields.

4.5 METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION

The data for the present study were retrieved from the above mentioned

bibliographic databases. The search was conducted for about one month during

January 2010 to collect data for nine years from 2001 – 2009 and for 2010 the

data were retrieved in January 2011 and combined with the data of 2001 – 2009.

Thus, a total of 8372 publications of various types viz. Article (7133),

Review (648), Meeting Abstract (224), Editorial Material (203) and

Bibliographic Item (164) were collected. The collected data were analysed

using MS–Excel Spreadsheet and MS–Word.

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4.6 BIBLIOMETRIC INDICATORS

4.6.1 Relative Growth Rate

Exponential model of growth suggested by Price1 has been adopted to fit

the data of the present study in order to calculate relative growth rate and doubling

time for annual publications of NIT faculties in India, for which the following

equation has been tested:

p (t ) = p 0 .e k .t (1)

Where, p(t ) is a function of time;

p0 is number of scientific publications; and

k is a positive real value.

In the present case, the above equation is replaced with the following

equation which was found similar to that from the software called ‘CurveExpert

1.3’. This can be mathematically expressed as:

y = ae bx

Where y is replaced in place of p(t);

a is replaced in place of p(0);

b is replaced in place of k; and

x is replaced in place of t.

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4.6.2 Doubling Time

From the calculation of equation (1), it is found that there is a direct

equivalence existing between the relative growth rates and doubling time. If the

number of publications of a subject doubles during a given period, then the

difference between the logarithm of the numbers at the beginning and at the end of

the period must be the logarithms of the number 2. Thus, the doubling time for

publications has been calculated based on the exponential fit. This can be

calculated through the mathematical expression as:

t d = (log 2) / k (2)

4.6.3 Author Productivity

Lotka’s law is a classical method used to test the regularity in the

publication activity of authors of scientific literature. It describes the frequency of

publication by authors in a given field. It states that the number (of authors)

making n contributions is about 1/n² of those making one; and the proportion of

all contributors that make a single contribution is in the region of 60 percent. This

means that out of all the authors in a given field, 60 percent will have just one

publication; 15 percent will have two publications (1/2² times 60); 7 percent will

have three publications (1/3² times 60), and so on2-5. For the present study,

Lotka’s Inverse Power Law model that states the function describing the pattern of

productivity of authors publishing in a specified subject field in a fixed time

period is mathematically given as:

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 y = C × x −n (3)

where x is the number of publications of interest (1,2, etc.,);

n is an exponent that is constant for a given set of data;

y is the expected percentage of authors with frequency x of

publications; and

C is a constant

The exponent n is often fixed at 2, in which case the law is known as the

inverse square law of scientific productivity. However, given that the exponent n

predicts the relative number of authors at each productivity level it would seem

useful to calculate it. In the present study, least square method has been used. It

can be expressed as:

N ∑ XY − ∑ X ∑ Y
n= (4)
N ∑ X 2 − (∑ X ) 2

Where N is the number of data pairs considered;

X is the logarithm of x (x=number of articles); and

Y is the logarithm of y (y=number of authors)

The constant C is calculated using the following formula:

1
C= (5)
∑1 / x n

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 In order to verify that the observed distribution of author productivity fits

the estimated distribution, Pao (1985) suggests applying the non-parametric

Kolmolgorov-Smirnov (K-S) goodness-of-fit test. To this end the maximum

difference between the real and estimated accumulated frequencies is calculated,

this value then being compared with the critical value (c.v.) obtained from the

following equation:

1.63
c.v. = (6)
(∑ y x + (∑ y x / 10)1 / 2 )
1/ 2

4.6.4 Degree of Collaboration

To examine the extent of research collaboration among the NIT faculties

in India, Subramaniam’s6 formula was adopted for the present study. It can be

statistically proposed as:

Nm
C= (7)
Nm + Ns

Where,

C = Degree of collaboration

Nm = Number of multiple authored papers

Ns = Number of single authored papers

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4.6.5 Bradford’s Law of Scattering

Bradford’s law of scattering has been adopted to examine the entire

Journal titles contributing to a bibliography those were focused in the field of

Engineering and Technology in India.

The Journals are arranged in the order of decreasing productivity. They are

divided into a nucleus of Journals/ periodicals more particularly devoted to the

science research and several groups or zones containing the same number of

articles as the nucleus where the number of periodicals in the nucleus and the

succeeding zones will be as 1: n : n2

For describing the scattering phenomena, the following formula is

adopted,

F ( x ) = a + b log x (8)

Where F(x) is the cumulative number of references as contained in the first - x

most productive journal and ‘a’ and ‘b’ are constants,

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4.6.6 OTHER TOOLS

The researcher has applied mean, standard deviation, co-efficient of

variance, Pearson and Partial correlation coefficient apart from the above

statistical tools. Graphic and diagrammatic representations have been presented,

wherever necessary.

4.7 CHAPTERISATION

The thesis has been divided into the following five chapters:

Chapter – I

The chapter – I, ‘Introduction’ focuses on various aspects related to the

study starting with the conceptual framework, background, statement of the

problem, and operational terminology.

Chapter – II

The second chapter on ‘Review of Related Literature’ is devoted to bring

out the facts and figures of the previous studies that have been carried out in this

area. The various kinds of literature reviewed for the present study includes

theoretical as well as empirical.

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Chapter – III

This chapter provides a brief profile of 20 national institutes of India

undertaken for the study

Chapter – IV

This chapter on ‘Research Design’ provides a detailed outline of

methodology viz., data collection source, method of data collection, various

bibliometric indicators, and statistical tools.

Chapter – V

This chapter entitled ‘Analysis of Data’ emphasises on the evaluation of

research productivity of NIT faculties in India. The facts and figures of the

quantitative data analysed using various bibliometric indicators have been

presented in a detailed and systematic manner.

Chapter – VI

The last but most important chapter ‘Conclusion’ discusses the entire

spectrum of the study in a comprehensive manner. This chapter provides the

findings, implications, and suggestions. It also gives an insight of the areas to be

concentrated in future.

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 REFERENCES

1. Price, D.J.S. (1963). Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia

University Press.

2. Rowlands, Ian (2005). Emerald Authorship data, Lotka’s Law and

Research Productivity. Aslib Proceedings : New Information Perspectives,

57(1):5-10.

3. Yueh, Ming, Jou, Shiow-Jem and Ma, Sheau-Shin (2000). Bibliometric

Study of Semiconductor Literature, 1978-1997. Scientometrics, 49:

491.509.

4. Kawamura, M…[et al] (1999). Lotka’s Law and the Pattern of Scientific

Productivity in the Dental Science Literature. Medical Informatics and the

Internet in Medicine, 24(4):309-315.

5. Lotka, A.J. (1926). The Frequency Distribution of Scientific Productivity.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 16:317-323.

6. Subramaniam, K. (1983). Bibliometrics studies of research Collaboration:

A review. Journal of Information Science, 6: 33-38.

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