Research Output of the Pakistani Library and Information Science Authors: A Bibliometric Evaluation of Their Impact

Abstract

This paper uses 601 cited papers of Pakistani LIS researchers with the purpose to examine the individual performance of these Library and Information Science (LIS) researchers in terms of their research output and its impact on the LIS (national/international) literature by using various bibliometric indicators. A list of 139 authors was compiled with the help of the Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA) and some other sources. Data were collected from Google Scholar and SPSS version 20 was utilized in order to identify the relationship between self-citations and various performance indices of the authors. The average citations received per paper vary from 1.80 to 10.08. About half of the papers were single-authored whereas less than one-fifth were by three or more authors. The authors who worked in collaboration produced more papers and received more citations. The h-index, g-index, hI-index, hI-norm, and e-index were used to determine the rank for each author. The intra-group citations grid revealed the volume of self-citations and a small group who cite each other more due to close academic and social relationships. The correlations between self-citations and the impact indices used revealed significant differences. Findings are useful for concerned institutions regarding award, promotions, etc. Further, future research should seriously consider the self-citations and social networking of authors while examining their citations-based research performance.