Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Education and Research

INTRODUCTION  

Scholarly  journals  are  primary source to disseminate  research work in public domain and  play  significant  role  in  knowledge  generation and storage  of  a particular research area. Selection  of  journal  for  publishing research  finding  for  a  researcher  is  a  tedious task.  There are various  journals mushrooming day by  day thus, evaluation of  journals becomes  important to inform and  suggest stakeholders  in a particular  research area. Journals are broadly  evaluated  by  quantitative  metrics  and subjective  methods. There are various methods  proposed to  evaluate journals depending upon several parameters thus  making it complex task  to evaluate journals  unbiased. Researchers are  always in quest  for  information about journals in their  respective  fields  to  publish  their  manuscript  in journal of  repute. 
Journal evaluation  is  also  significant for  librarians  in  order to subscribe best  source  of  information to their libraries. Some parameters for  high standard journals are its  inclusion in major citation  indexing and  abstracting databases, double blind peer review  system for evaluation of  manuscript  submitted  for publication, recommendation  by subject  experts, high frequency  of  citation  of  published articles  by  similar journals in their respective f ields,  readership  and  usage  statistics,  rate  of submission  of  articles  and their  acceptance. Less  acceptance  percentage  are also considered  as reputation  of  academic  journals. Bibliometric  analysis  is  one of  the  most
common trend  of  evaluating  journals,  organizations and  individual  researchers  reflecting  their  productivity and impact  based  on various scientometric  indicators.  A number of  researchers have  used  bibliometric methods to analyse  research journals. Pathak and Bharati1  (2018) analysed  Indian  journal of  traditional knowledge  to explore the  indigenous  tribal knowledge  and its  impact. Nishy  et al.2  (2012)  studied  the  visibility  and impact of Indian  Journal  of  Chemistry section  B to investigate  its visibility  and subject  area covered  in the  journal. Prathap3  (2014)  explored  bibliometric  profile  of  journal current  science.  Dutt  et  al.4  (2003)  investigated  journal Scientometrics. Schubert5  (2002)  analysed  first  50  volumes of  journal Scientometrics. Indian  Journal of  Pharmaceutical  Education and Research  (IJPER)  is  the  official  publication  of  Association of  Pharmaceuticals  Teacher of  India. IJPER was conceived in  1967  and  published quarterly. It publishes research  in Pharmaceutical,  Pharmacy  and  allied areas including issues and  debates  in Pharmaceutical  education. IJPER  is indexed with  Science  Citation Index Expanded,  a database of  Clarivate  Analytics  from Institute  of  Scientific  Information,  Philadelphia,  USA  under the  category  Pharmacology  Pharmacy  and Education Scientific  Disciplines  since  2007.  Elsevier  Scimago  journal  ranking indexes  IJPER under Pharmacology, Toxicology  and Pharmaceutics  and has been  ranked  28  out of  74 journals in this category from  India  with  SJR  value of  0.169  in Q3.  It  ranks 14  out  of  21  journals in Pharmaceutical  sciences  indexed  by  SCI-E  among Indian journals. Its  current impact factor is 0.425  (JCR 2018). It is indexed by all other reputed  citation  databases such as  Scopus,  ABC Chemistry,  African Index Medicus, Connect  Journals, Geneva Foundation for Medical Education  and Research (GFMER),  Google  Scholar, New  Jour-Georgetown  University  Library  USA,  Open  J Gate,  Pharmaceutical  Sciences  Open  Access  Resources (PSOAR),  Science  Central,  Ulrichs  web,  Indian  Science Abstracts,  Medicinal and Aromatic  Plants  Abstracts (MAPA), HINARI etc. The main  objective of  this paper  is to investigate the productivity  and impact  of  IJPER on various scientometric  indicators viz. year wise  publication growth, most  contributing  organizations,  Authors,  Global outreach, highly cited papers, authorship  pattern, collaboration, cited  and citing  journals, Impact  factor trend over the years etc.

MATERIALS AND METHODS 

Data for  this study was retrieved from  Web of  Sciencecore  collection  database  of  Clarivate  Analytics  (earlier Thomson  Reuters)  on 24th  Sept 2019.  Search was performed by using advance search feature  of  the database for  year 2007-2019.  This yielded total 1115  documents in six  documents  types. Web of  science  provides  analyze  results  feature.  By  using  this  feature  documents published in  year 2019  were excluded  from  current analysis. Results  under Document type  “correction” was also excluded from  this study  as it is repetition of earlier published work. Thus total  997  results  obtained and selected  for the  study.  Search technique  is  as under: IS=0019-5464  Refined  by:  [excluding]  PUBLICATION  YEARS:  (2019)  AND  [excluding]  DOCUMENT  TYPES:  (CORRECTION)  Timespan:  All years.  Indexes:  SCI-EXPANDED,  SSCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, CCR-EXPANDED, IC. Results  were  exported  in  excel  file  for  further  analysis. Authors and organization’s  name were  checked  manually  and all the  variants for same  name were  normalized to standard  name. Software  VosViewer visualizing scientific  landscape  version  1.6.11  were  used  to  map  the  coauthorship  and keyword  cluster  analysis. Cited  journal, citing  Journal and Impact  factor  statistics  were  downloaded from  Incites  Journal  Citation reports. Indexing and abstracting  information was retrieved  from Journal’s webpage  (http://www.ijper.org/content/aboutjournal.asp). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Indian  Journal of  Pharmaceutical  Education and Research  is published since  1967  and  till 2018,  52 volumes  of  the  journal has been  published including supplementary  issues  on  diversified  area  of  pharmaceutical  sciences. During 2007-2018  IJPER published 997 papers, minimum number  of  papers  i.e. 52 was published  in year 2010  and 2015  while  year 2017  has highest  number of  published manuscript  with  223.  Figure  1  depicts  the  year-wise  publication  and citations in  the epoch. The highest  number of  cumulative citations  have  been  received  by  publications  published  in year 2011  with  435  cites  which is  25.37%  of  total  citations  received,  followed  by  year  2017  with  173  citations and year  2012  with  154  citations.  IJPER received  1714 citations  till the date of  data collection  that indicates that there  are 132 average citations  per year and  1.71 citations  per  item.  Overall  citations  behavior  indicates that  it  is increasing  exponentially  with  1  citation  in year 2007  to 248  citations  in year  2019.  (Table 1).  Citation behavior  is in direct  correlation  with  its  impact factor. In year 2009  journal impact  factor was 0.150  which jumped  to  0.425  (JCR  2018).  Its  five  year  impact  factor  is also  showing increasing trend  (Figure  2).  The 997 articles  published  in journal have  been  contributed  by 2890  authors. analysis of  authors  reveal that there are 2388 authors which contributed one article to the jour-nal, 342 authors contributed 2 number of articles, 79 authors contributed 3 number of articles, 46 authors contributed 4 number of articles, 12 authors contrib-uted 5 and 6 number of articles each. Table 2 shows the list of most productive authors with publications 7 or more. Sanjay PN Pai is the most productive author with 10 publications in the journal, followed by Swarn-lata Saraf and Nazim Sekeroglu with 9 publications each, Anand Panchakshari Gadad, Kerim Guney, Kamla Pathak and Adhikrao Vyankatrao Yadav contributed 8 articles each, Mahesh Attimarad, Anroop Balachan-dran Nair, Shailendra Saraf and P V Swamy contrib-uted 7 articles each in IJPER during 2007-2018. Table 3 shows the authorship pattern of published literature in the journal. There are 11 different authorship patterns. Three author publication is the most prevalent author-ship pattern in the journal during period of study with 249 publications, followed by 4 author (211), 2 author (198). Highest number of author in a paper is 11. There are 47 publications with single author. Table 4 shows the global outreach of Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Education and Research. Country-wise analysis reflects that there are 59 countries which contributed in the journal. In countries other than India, Turkey is lead-ing the list with 93 publications followed by Malaysia, Republic of China and Saudi Arabia with 43, 27 and 25 publications respectively. Top 10 contributing countries include Iran, Serbia, Pakistan, Egypt and South Korea.Analysis of contributing organizations indicates that KLE University is the most prolific organization con-tributing in IJPER with 46 publications followed by

JSS College of Pharmacy with 34 publications. In the top 10 organizations four are from foreign countries. Kastamonu University is leading the list of organizations among foreign countries with 23 publications followed by Ordu University, Univ Tehnol Mara and Belgrade University with 18, 17 and 14 publications respectively (Table 5). There are total 824 organizations which have contributed in this journal.The co-authorship network analysis reveals that there are 8 cluster of co-authorship with 55 items and 138 links (Figure 3). Cluster 1 consists of 9 items, cluster 2,3 and 4 each with 8 items, cluster 5 and 6 consists 6 item

each and cluster 7 and 8 comprising of 5 items. Simi-larly Co-occurrence analysis of keywords depicts that there are total 3288 author keywords with antioxidant as most frequent keywords with 28 occurrences. The key-word network distributed in 82 clusters with 2569 items and 7734 links. Cluster 1 consists of 69 items followed cluster 2 with 63 items, cluster 3 and 4 each with 60 items. (Figure 4)

Out of 997 articles published in Indian Journal of Phar-maceutical Education and Research, 514 articles have received citation. Highest number of citations received is 68. There are two articles having citation between 31-70 5 articles have received citations between 21-30, 13 articles have citation range 11-20, 44 articles have citations between 6-10 and 450 articles have citations between 1-5 (Table 6). Total 3604 number of journals has been cited by IJPER. Table 7 enlists high impact

citing journals. CA- Cancer Journal of Clinicians having impact factor 223.67 have been cited twice in this journal, followed by New England Journal of Medicine (70.67), Lancet (59.102), Nature Review Drug Discovery (57.618), Nature Review Cancer (51.848), JAMA-Journal of American Medical Association (51.273), Nature (43.07) and Science (41.037). There are total 69 journals in which IJPER has been cited. Among high impact journals in which published article of IJPER has been cited includes Advanced Colloid Interface (8.243), Food hydrocolloid (5.839), International Journal of Biological Macromolecule (4.784), Pharmaceutics (4.773) (Table 8). Table 9 highlights the top 10 highly cited articles in IJPER. Out of 10 top highly cited article 9 have been published in year 2011 and one article published in 2010. This reveals that article published in year is the most impactful. The most cited work is entitled Recent Investigations of Plant Based Natural Gums, Mucilages and Resins in Novel Drug Delivery Systems by Avachat et al. published in 2011 with 68 citations followed by Polymeric Micelles: General Considerations and their Applications by Mourya et al. with 47 citation, Evaluation of the Kinetics and Mechanism of Drug Release from Econazole nitrate Nanosponge Loaded Carbapol Hydrogel by Sharma et al. and Stability Aspects of Liposomes by Yadav et al.

CONCLUSION

 It can be concluded  that Indian  Journal  of  Pharmaceutical  Education  and  Research  is  one  of  the  significant journal  in  the  field  of  Pharmaceutical  research.  This study  will  be  useful  to  teachers,  students,  Publishers and Librarians  in evaluating research and status  of  the journal. This may  also be useful  for policy  and planning to  focus  on pharmaceutical  research and explore the  unidentified  and  uncovered  area  in  Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacy.

REFERENCES 

1.Pathak M, Bharati  KA. Growing  visibility  and  impact of Indian  Journal of Traditional  Knowledge.  Indian Journal of  Traditional  Knowledge. 2018;17(3):407-13.

2.Nishy P,  Parvatharajan P,  Prathap G.  Visibility and impact of  the Indian Journal of Chemistry,  Section B during 2005-2009  using scientometric Techniques. Indian Journal of Chemistry Section B. 2012;51B(1):269-84.

3.Prathap G.  A  bibliometric  profile  of  Current  Science.  Current Science. 2014;106(7):958-63.

4.Dutt B, Garg KC, Bali  A. Scientometrics  of the international  journal Scientometrics. Scientometrics.  2003;56(1):81-93.

5.Schubert  A.  The  web  of  scientometrics:  A  statistical  overview  of  the  first  50 volumes of the journal.  Scientometrics. 2002;53(1):3-20.

About Authors

Manohar  Pathak,  is  a  M.Sc.  (Botany), MLIS  working  with   Directorate  of Education.  Govt  of  NCT  Delhi.  His research area   focuses on Scientometrics and  Informetrics,  citation  analysis  and quantitative studies of science.