Journal of Informetrics: A Bibliometric Profile

This paper critically analyses 239 scholarly communications published in the inaugural five volumes of Journal of Informetrics (JOI) to examine growth of literature, types of communications, authorship pattern, collaboration trend, predominant research domains, etc. Subsequent analysis focuses on prolific contributors, degree of collaboration, and time-lag trend. Findings reveal that - publication output doubles over the study period as article publications increase considerably; though single-authored contributions were significant (30 %), majority of contributions were collaborated by two-authors (36 %), while average authorship accounts for 2.28 per communications. Degree of collaboration (DC) was impressive (0.699) but not overwhelming as research collaborations has emanated from 199 higher learning institutions of 32 countries across the globe. Ranking of prolific contributors has shown Prof. Egghe on the top followed by L Bornmann; R Rousseau and L Leydesdoff. Result also shows upward trend of keyword usage with an average of 4.55 per items, of which h-index, citation analysis, bibliometrics, g-index, etc, expectedly predominates. Scholarly nature of source journal has been further ascertained from increasing citations and reference usage trend. Moreover, growing hardness of the field has been attributed to JOI due to the increasing usage of tables and figures. Study also showed that the journal takes an average of about four month time to publish a manuscript.