Publication productivity and web visibility of environmental science scholars at Ardhi University: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to assess the publication productivity and web visibility of researchers in the School of Environmental Science and Technology at Ardhi University for the period between 1996 and 2013. Data were extracted using the Publish or Perish software which uses Google Scholar to retrieve the number of publications, citation counts and related metrics. The study findings revealed that 228 publications were recorded for all researchers, giving an average of 13 publications per year. The year 2010 had the highest (10.1%) number of publications followed by 2002 with 9.6% of all publications. The year 2001 had the lowest (1.3%) number of publications. Most (67%) publications were multiple-authored and the degree of collaboration among scholars was 0.67. The top ten ranked scholars contributed the vast majority (93%) of the publications with an average of 19 publications per scholar. However, these top ten scholars showed considerable variation since no single scholar maintained the same rank in all nine metrics. The study findings also show that only five articles had received at least 50 citation counts. About 29% of the total publications were published in 17 journals. These findings suggest, among other things, that many factors should be considered in combination when evaluating researchers’ productivity and impact.

Keywords: Publication productivity, environmental science, bibliometrics, Ardhi University