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Annals of Library Science and Documentation 1989,36(3),69-74

THREE NEW BIBLIOMETRIC PARAMETERS TORERANK MICROBIOLOGY PERIODICALS

Citation study is now considered as one of theau then tic tools for selection of scientific periodi-cals. However, ranking journals by traditionalmethod of citation counting is not free fromlimitations. The paper shows ways and meansto eliminate these pitfalls by application ofthree new bibliometric parameters introducedby Sengupta earlier. It is stressed that thesenew parameters are capable' of making a rank-ing list of any scientific discipline more authen-tic and needbased as they arrange journalsaccording to their scientific interest in relationto total number of articles published; com-pactness of information content in a scientificjournal; and scientific value of the publishe£papers in relation to compactness of presenta-tion. As a case study these parameters havebeen applied to the first ten core journals ofmicrobiology identified earlier. The paper pre-sents a revised ranking order of these journalsand the importance of this new ranking orderis discussed from the point of view of its uti-lity to users.

INTRODUCTION

Scientific serials have many peculiarities. Theirdate of inception, frequency of publication,bulk, format, scientific value of articles, com-pactness of information content etc., vary fromjournal to journal. Thus the positions of jour-nals in any ranking list based on the traditionalmethod of citation counting may not be thetrue index of their practical value and conse-quently may be mislcading if no built-in correc-tion system for the above mentioned variablesis made while ranking scientific periodicals.Thus, all the earlier and recent ranking tables

Vol 36 No 3 Sept 1989

I N SENGUPTAScientist-in-ChargeLibrary & Documentation UnitIndian Institute of Chemical BiologyCalcutta-700032

based on citation counting from primary orsecondary source journals (e.g. Gross [1] and

"Gross, Gross [2] and Woodford, Mengert [3],Gregory [4L Henkle [5], Brodman [6"], Smith[7], Fussler [8], Coile [9], Brown [10], Raisig[11], Craig (12], Sengupta [13-17], Steward[18], Chakraborthy [19], Lawani [20], Singh[21], etc.), on different scientific disciplinesneed suitable correction. It is felt that suitablemeasures should be taken to correct the bulkof material published in a year. Further, inorder to make ranking tables more purpose-ful, practical, and accurate, journals of thesetables should be arranged according to thescientific value of the published papers with aweightage for compactness of presentation.Keeping this in mind Sengupta [22] devisedthree new bibliometric parameters which arecapable of assessing scientific journals of anyranking list from the practical point of view andhe applied these parameters earlier to rerankperiodicals in the field of biochemistry. Wenow propose to use these parameters for properevaluation of the periodicals listed in Sen-gupta 's [15] international ranking list of micro-biology. As a case study, we are applying themonly to the first 10 microbiology periodicalsof Sengupta [15]. We believe that the correctedlist will arrange the most useful journals formicrobiologists in respect of their scientificvalue and compactness of information content.

METHODOLOGY

The same hibliometric parameters namely,(D/A), (CIA) and (D/C) have been used as inthe case of biochemistry to evaluate the rankedperiodicals of microbiology. The three para-meters we devised earlier are :

61)

i) D/A: Scientific interest of a journalin relation to the total number of articlespublished;

ii) CIA: Compactness of the informationcontent in a scientific periodical; and

iii) D/C: The scientific value of the papers inrelation to compactness of presentation.

As usual, in these three newly coined para·meters :

A stands for total number of articles pub-lished in a journal during a particular year;

B stands for total number of pages publishedby a journal during a particular year;

C denotes total number of words publishedin that journal during that particular year,and

D is the total number of bibliographic cita-tions noted in favour of that journal fromthe source journal(s) during that particularyear.

We believe that among the three para-meters the third one from all considerations isby far the best criterion to identify the mostimportant core journals from users' point ofview.

The procedure of Sengupta [22] was follow-ed to calculate the numerical values of A, B, Cand D.

Now since all the variables A, C, and Dareknown, the numerical values of the parametersDI A, CIA, and D/C can be easily calculated.These parameters will help to analyse thenumber of citations in relation to the size ofthe journal and the average length of the paperspublished in a journal, by eliminating the biasdue to the bulk of research periodicals whichis unrelated to the scientific value of individualpapers published in it. Such bias is inevitablein ranking lists prepared on the basis of numeri-cal counting of citations of individual periodi-cals.

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SENGUPTA

DISCUSSION

The first vertical column of Table 1 enumerates10 ranked titles of microbiology. In the sub-sequent vertical columns we have shown thenumericaI values of A, B, C and D in respect ofthese 10 periodicals along with their respectivenumber of citations noted for 1969. Our mainobjective is to apply these three parametersseparately on these titles to find out their re-lative importance and to rerank them accordingto actual scientific interest of a journal in re-lation to the total number of papers published(D/A), the compactness of the information con-tent (CIA) and the scientific value of the paperin relation to compactness of presentation(D/C).

The value DIA is an index of the scientificvalue of the papers published in a journal,corrected for the bulk of material published ina year, which varies considerably from journalto journal. When titles in the uncorrectedranking list (Table 1) are reranked according tothe value of DIA, the revised list puts thejournals in order of their scientific value with-out bias due to bulk. Thus from Table 2 it willbe seen that the proportion of papers of scienti-fic value in microbiology, as judged by fre-quency of citations per paper published ishighest for Virology (ranked 3rd in Table 1)followed by ]. gen. Microbiol. and J. Bact.(ranked 8th and 1st in Table 1 respectively).But the margin between these three journalsis very narrow. Thus if we rerank Sengupta'sfirst 10 ranked journals in the field of micro-biology the reranking order according to para-meter Df A will be as shown in Table 2.

It is interesting to note that when guidedby this parameter the first three positionsgo exclusively to microbiology journals. Thisconforms to expectation as each of these threejournals is considered as one of the best mediaof communication for the working microbio-logists. The reason for 'Virology' toping thelist, perhaps, is the present predominant inter-est in molecular biology and virology being adiscipline basic to present experimental work inmolecular biology. Similarly, the high positionsof ]. molec. BioI. undoubtedly reflects the newdirections of interest in present-day biological

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NEW BIBLIOMETRIC PARAMETERS

Table 1

The First Ten Periodicals of Sengupta's Ranking List of Microbiology '" withCorresponding Values of A, B, C and D

Rank Name of the journal Number of Total Total Number ofpapeJ1l number number citationspublished of pages of words noted forduring the 1969yenr

A Ii C 1)

J. Bact.Vols.97·100, 1969 833 5272 2699264 491

2 Proc, natn. Acad. Sci., U.S.A.Vol. 62·64,1969 S97 4100 1435000 196

3 VirologyVols.37·39,1969 306 2356 883500 ]92

4 Nature, Lond.Vois. 221.224, 1969 2297 5317. 3349710 114

5 J. molec. BioI.Vols.39-46,1%9 3115 4671 1050975 164

6 J. bioI. Chern.Vol. 244,1969 902 6708 3823560 138

7 Biochim, biophys. ActaVols. 171.195,1969 1878 14522 4066160 72

8 J. gen. Microbiol.VoIs.55·59,1969 232 2153 734173 139

9 Biochem. biophys. Res. Commun.Vols. 34·37, 1969 592 3922 686350 109

10'i/

Science, N.Y.Vols. 163·166, 1969 1209 6057 369-i770 77-----------------------------------------------------------

-This ranking order was based on total citations collected for the year 1968, 1969 and 1970.

Table 2

Reranked Order of First Ten Journals in the Fiela ofMirobiology according to Parameter DIA

Reranked Name of the journal Number of Number of Number oforder papers citations citations

published noted for per paperduring the 1969year

A n 1)tA

1 Virology 306 192 0.627

2 ]. gen. Microbiol. 2:12 139 0.599

3 J. Bact. 833 4')} 0.589

4 J. molee. BioI. 385 164- 0.426

5 Proc. natn. Acad. Sci., U.S.A. 597 196 0.328

6 Biochem. biophys. Res. Commun. 592 109 0.184

7 J. bioI. Chern 902 1:18 0.1538 Science, N.Y. 1209 77 0.064

9 Nature, Lond. 2297 114 0.050

10 Biochim. biophys. Acta 187U 72 0.0311-----------------------------------------------------~------

Vol 36 No 3 Sept 1989 71

SENGUPTA

research. When judged by this parameter, theinformation content of scientific value for thejournal Biochim. biophys. Acta is the lowest:an indication perhaps of its undue bulk. How-ever, it may be mentioned here that this para-meter may be misleading when applied to multi-disciplinary general science journals like Nature,Lond., Proc. natn. Acad. Sci., U.S.A. andScience, N. Y., with broader scientific coverage,since the formula which we have devised forthis parameter has no built in correction for thevariable proportion of papers of non-microbio-logical interest in such periodicals. Therefore,it follows that the scientific value of paperli onmicrobiology published in these three multi-disciplinary general science journals is evenconsiderably greater than what has appeared inTable 2.

It has been stated that the compactness ofinformation is inversely related to the value ofCIA. Calculating the value of CIA from Table 1,it is seen that the compactness-of-information-content Biochem. biophys. Res. Commun. rankshighest. The aim and objective with which thisjournal was launched, namely, publishing signi-:ficant results with least possible delay, suffi-ciently justify its occupying the highest positionwhen judged by this parameter. Table 3 providesthe .reranked order of the first ten journalsaccording to the paramter compactness-of-information-content.

The third parameter D/C assesses a journalaccording to the scientific value of the paperspublished, with a weightage introduced for com-pactness of presentation. Among all the threeparameters introduced by us, we believe this

Table 3Reranked Order of First Ten Journals in the Field of

Mirobiology according to Parameter CIA

Reranked Name of the journalorder

Number ofpaperspublishedduring theyear

A

Totalnumberof words

Averagelength ofpaper mwords

C CIA

1 Biochem. biophys, Res. Commun. 592 686350 1159.4

2 Nature, Lond. 2297 3349710 1458.3

3 Biochim. biophys. Acta 1878 4066160 2165.2

4 Proc. natn. Acad. Sci., U.S.A. 597 1435000 2403.7

5 ]. molec. BioI. 385 1050975 2729.8

6 Virology 306 883500 2887.3

7 Science, N.Y. 1209 3694770 3056.1

8 J. gen. Microbioi. 232 734173 3164.5

9 J. Bact. 833 2699264 3240.4

10 ]. bioI. Chern. 902 3823;-)60 4239.0--------------- -------------------- ----------------- -------

72 Ann Lib Sci Doc

NEW BIBLIOMETRIC PARAMETERS

one will provide the best index of value of ascientific journal to research workers in thefield of microbiology, and therefore will alsoprove to be the best guide to selection of jour-nals for subscription. This parameter has beenconveniently obtained by simultaneous applica-tion of both criteria - proportion of scientificallyvaluable papers (DI A) and compactness ofinformation content (CIA) i.e. DIA -7- CIA = D/C.The order of the first 10 periodicals of Table 1after reranking on the basis of the parameterD/C has been shown in Table 4.

From Table 4 it will be seen that when para-meter D/C is applied, Virology again rankshighest followed by J. gen. Microbiol. and IBact., the three most prestigious conventional

research periodicals in the field of microbiology.Papers published in the first 10 journals reflectthe major trends of microbiological research.These journals also appear to be the main inter-national media of microbiological communica-tions reflecting the progress of microbiologicalknowledge more accurately and purposefullythan any other journals on the subject. It istherefore felt that all working microbiologistsshould scan these journals in order to keepthemselves abreast of the' current trends ofmicrobiological research. The list, should alsoserve as an authentic tool to help the librariansand information scientists in selecting journalsfor subscription and also for documentationwork. This list· will also ensure for them the

Table 4

Reranleed Order of the First Ten Journals in the Field of Microbiology according to Parameter DIG

Reranked Name of the journal Average Number of No. of citationsorder length citations in relation to

of paper per page overall size ofin words published volumes published

during the y:ear(CIA) (D/A) (*D/C x lO4)

1 Virology 2887.3 0.627 2.2

2 J. gen. Microbiol. 3164.5 0.599 1.9

3 J. Bact. 3240.4 0.589 1.8

4 Biochem. biophys. Res. Commun. 1159.4 0.184 1.6

4 J. molec. BioI. 2729.8 0.426 1.6

6 Proc. natn. Acad. Sci., U.S.A. 2403.7 0.328 1.4

7 J. bioI. Chern. 4239.0 0.153 0.4

8 Nature, Lond. 1458.3 0.050 0.3

9 Biochim. biophys, Acta 2165.2 0.038 0.2

9 Science, N.Y. 3056.1 0.064 0.2

Total: lO

*For value of A, Band C see Table 1.'. .Vol 36 No 3 Sept 1989

optimum utilisation of their library budget forthe benefit of their clientele, and in prepara-tion of documentation lists for circulation.

I t is needless to point that among thesethree parameters priority in acquisition may begiven to the parameter Die as explained earlierin the text. Further, this bibliometric analysisis a case study only for the first 10 rankedjournals in the field of microbiology. The sameprocedure may be applied to other rankedperiodicals of microbiology and complete rank-ed list of journals in order of diminishing im-portance, can be obtained conveniently.

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3. Mengert, W F: The periodicals on endocrinologysex. Endocrinology 1934,18, 421-2.

4. Gregory, J: An evaluation of medical periodicals.Bull. med. Lib. Ass. 1937, 26, 172-88.

5. Henkle, H N: The periodical literature of bio-chemistry. Bull. med.Libr. Ass. 1938, 27, 139-47.147.

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