Information Needs and Use Pattern of Educationists

The chapter attempts to identify the information needs of educationists based on the citations in Master's degree dissertations in Education. The source for the study is the Master's degree dissertations submitted to the Manonmanium Sundaranar University during the period 1996 - 2006 from N.V.K.S.D. College of Education. The citation-based approach is followed in the study. Number of citations, cited articles, authors, frequency and percentage distributions were the tools used to analyze the data. Findings showed that journals were the most utilized reference materials in the dissertations. Indian periodicals are ranked first, followed by that from the USA. Mostly cited periodicals are published in the year 1993 with 181 citations (14.23%) and mostly-cited books were published in the year 1996 with 71 (13.95%) citations. Moreover, highest number of citations was in the year 1997 with 702(10.19%) citations and the lowest number of citations was during the year 2001 with 337(4.89%) citations.

Health Information Systems and Their Usefulness Among the Women Folk of Kanyakumari District, India

This chapter describes how health is the most precious component for the happiness and all-round development of human being in the society. Alongside this, information is an important resource for individual growth and survival. Therefore, a Health Information System (HIS) is a system for collecting/processing of data from various sources, and using the information for policy-making and management of health services. This chapter discusses health literacy and its association with health information needs and health information literacy, the status of women in India and their influence in the well-being of the family, and the impact of HIS. This chapter also proves that with enough data obtained from the women of Kanyakumari District in India, the government's policy needs to be directed towards women for the success of its health-care programmes.

Visualizing Zika Virus Research Literature Through Bibliometric Mapping

This study outlines a significant relationship between a spurt of research activity in the field and the outbreak of the Zika disease, for the purpose of visualizing the phenomenon. By using bibliographic research, it is possible to correlate data with this disease. To identify the hotspots of research the data is evaluated using the following parameters: literature growth since 1975; most prolific authors and their contributions; top contributing institution, country, and journal; identify co-authorship clusters of the authors and institutions; and finally, to create and examine co-word maps of the keywords. It is also found that under-developed countries like Senegal and Zambia have contributed to Zika research along with the USA, France and Germany. Forty-five per cent of the contributions are concentrated in six journals.

How to Design and Frame a Questionnaire

The present chapter explores the essential stages in designing and developing the questionnaires and offers a basic introduction to beginners who are at the preliminary stages of their research. The study was approached purely from a theoretical perspective and various issues and challenges have been addressed including the length of questionnaires, how to distribute a questionnaire and how to analyze the data. The study concluded that researchers often rely on the previously developed questionnaire rather than developing the new one because it requires the knowledge and expertise. For novice researchers, developing entirely a new questionnaire requires a basic understanding of the format of the questionnaire, length of the questionnaire and how to distribute a questionnaire. Therefore, the chapter presents a systematic way to develop a questionnaire keeping in view all the issues and problems faced by researchers who are engaged in study for a thesis or in other research projects.

The Concepts of Academic Humility and Seniority in Scholarship

The concept of academic humility has often been ill-defined or ill-conceived by members of the Nigerian academia. It argues that this concept has objectionably been associated – nay confused – with “academic subservience”, “academic hypocrisy”, “false modesty” and “yesmanism”. Such misconception could partially be attributed to the prevalence of the “seniority syndrome”. In effect, the seniority syndrome has often wanted that pertinence be ascribed unto a research idea or thesis not necessarily on account of the robustness of the methodology that led to its enunciation, but principally on account of the “seniority” (credentials) of the researcher who authors the thesis or idea in question. This tendency has generally stemmed from the faulty assumption that a senior researcher is theoretically more knowledgeable than his or her junior counterparts; and that the “junior researcher” must manifest unconditional reverence for his or her senior colleagues. This scenario is most often observed during Ph.D. these defenses and similar forums aimed at evaluating research in Nigerian universities.

The Scientific Communication Process in Homoeopathic Toxicology

The present chapter evaluates the growth of literature of Toxicology in Homoeopathy. The Scopus database is used as source for the study. Data pertaining to toxicology in homoeopathy for the period 1963 to 2017 is retrieved and analyzed. The study reveals that toxicology literature grows rapidly in the later stages than in the earlier period. The United States of America is the leading contributors at the global level and India is in second position. Among the contributors, E.J. Calabrese, Professor of Toxicology, University of Massachusetts is the most prolific author for Toxicology in Homoeopathy literature. University of Kalyani and University of Massachusetts are the leading institutions, majority of the records are published in the journal ‘Homoeopathy', which is published from the USA and major contributions are in the subject domain ‘medicine' (65.4 per cent). Most frequently repeated keywords in toxicology of homoeopathy literature are: homoeopathy, humans, non-human, unclassified drug and animals.

Dynamics of Indian Forensic Science Research

Science and technology are continuously changing as new discoveries and inventions are made. Research funding agencies, project directors, and individual researches need to keep a tab on these dynamics. This chapter tracks the research directions of forensic science for a period of thirty-eight years starting from 1975. Data for the analysis was obtained from SCOPUS bibliographic and citation database. Over the study period there was an exponential growth of forensic science literature and documentation. The United States of America contributed about one fourth of the research papers published while the most prolific author was Bruce Budowle (University of Texas). The majority of the contributors were from the non-governmental sector. The Journal of Forensic Sciences was the most productive journal during the study period in terms of number of published papers. It was also found that internationally collaborated papers attracted more citations.

Research Trends in Forensic Sciences

This chapter outlines how scientometric tools and techniques are increasingly used to find the growth and direction of research. Forensic sciences are the application of science and technology in the administration of law and justice. Forensic Sciences encompass a wide range of subspecialties which are applied in adjudication of civil and criminal legal issues. Five subspecialties, viz., Forensic Anthropology (FA), Forensic Genetics (FG), Forensic Medicine (FM), Forensic Psychology (FP), and Forensic Toxicology (FT) were comparatively analyzed to find the growth of literature, source documents contributing to the literature growth and also the keywords used to find the research trends in these subspecialties. Data pertaining to these subspecialties documented from 2006 to 2015 were retrieved from the Science Direct platform and studied using MS-Excel and VOSviewer. The cumulative growth of literature showed a linear trend. The study found Forensic Science International as the top contributing journal. Significant association was observed between FA, FG, FM and FT literature while FP was not.

Authorship Pattern and Collaborative Research Productivity of Asian Journal of Dairy and Food Research During the Year 2011 to 2015

The chapter brings out the results of a bibliometric analysis of the journal titled Asian Journal of Diary and Food Research for the period from 2011 to 2015. The data was downloaded from the journal's website. This study aims at analyzing the research output performance of co-authorship index and collaborative index. The analysis covers mainly the publication of articles, year-wise distribution of articles, degree of collaboration, institution-wise distribution, authorship pattern, etc. The results show the merits and weakness of the journal which will be helpful for its further development.

A Scientometric Profile of Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC) Based on Scopus Database

This chapter creates the scientometric profile of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) for the period from 1973 to 2016. The scientific productivity of the scientists is analyzed using scientometric indicators based on the data retrieved from the Scopus database. The analysis revealed that linear growth is prevailing. It also shows that the scientists are actively involved in disseminating their research findings in scholarly journals and G.V. Rao secured first position among the top-ranking authors. The Indian Institute of Science is the leading collaborating institution with VSSC and the United States is topmost collaborating country. Most of the scholarly communications of VSSC are published in the ‘Journal of Sound & Vibration' and a majority of the records are of an article type. Most of the articles are published in the inter-disciplinary subject of Engineering. The study also found that the total number of citations received by the documents published from VSSC are 17395 and out of the 1783 documents published and 1385 documents received citations.