Periodical literature bibliometric analysis: a case study of four international journals

Bibliometrics is most popular among the scholars, researchers and academics in the faculty of Library and Information Science research. The current study is a bibliometrics analysis of four international journals such as: 1st "Language Sciences" (LS) and 2nd "Linguistics and Education" (L&E), 3rd 'Political Geography' (PG), and 4th 'Religion' (Rgn). The present paper attempts to evaluate the publications indexed under the database of Science Direct Top 25 hottest Papers journal literature to understand the global approach of research output in four core journals. This is a comprehensive survey work rendering bibliographic records from Science Direct top 25 hottest papers database during 2005-2013, and this paper strenuously tries to give a complete sketch of the evaluation of research outputs. The key findings of the research divulge that, out of a total number of 3300 papers undertaken for the present research work, 900 were taken from 1st three journals and 60 0 shared by the 4 th journal "Religion". It is indicated from the study that top 15 authors of all four journals identically contributed 349 (38.77%), 281 (31.22%), 384 (42.66 %) and 239 (39.83 %) papers to their credit which counts more than one third of the whole contribution except 2nd journal. In all journals the greater number 79, 76, 72, and 85 percent papers were produced by single authors, while the collaborated papers were only 21, 24, 28, and 15 percent the study unmasks. Considering the authors' institutional affiliation it is ascertained that, the authors' contributed to the journals was affiliated to 153, 152, 169 and 80 unique institutions encompassing intercontinental regions, which again determines maximum number of institutional contributors are involved in 3rd journal, while minimum institutional contributors in 4th journal respectively. Besides, the geographical analysis indicates the involvement of cross national regions in the research practices is well found considerably benchmarking. Moreover, the study evidently shows that the overwhelming and most productive geographical region contributors' USA shared 208 (23.11%), 354 (39.33%) and 231 (38.5 %) papers in 1st, 2nd and 4th journal with posed 1st rank, while UK achieved 1st rank having contribution 396 (44%) to the 3rd journal respectively. Resultantly, it could be professed here that, the both regions (USA and UK) are considerably granted as leading productive nations and prolific in the realm of global research.