Letter to the Editor

摘要

This refers to the article1 by G L Soumya Rani and K G Sudhier on information science and scientometrics research in India during 2011-2015.I am sorry to say that the figures given in Table 1 of the article do not reflect the correct scenario as the coverage of Indian Science Abstracts is not comprehensive. Indian LIS authors publish articles in Indian and foreign journals, conferences and festschrift volumes. Indian Science Abstracts covers selected Indian journals. It does cover conference proceedings as well as festschrift volumes. As a result the coverage of LIS literature in ISA is only partial. The data given in the article is likely to mislead professionals as to the Indian LIS literature output. For example, the article shows the number of articles from 2011 to 2015 ranges from 204 to 449. In reality the number is much higher. Indian Library Science Abstracts 2006-20102 has covered around 3,000 abstracts, that means on average it has covered around 600 abstracts per year. Table 1 shows Indian contributions in 2015 as 261. In fact, the number of Indian articles on bibliometrics alone is around 150 (See Appendix* given below). The list shows Indian contributions in Indian and foreign sources and foreign contributions in Indian sources. Apart from articles on bibliometrics and related subjects, India on average produces 500 articles on LIS excluding articles published in predatory journals. Thus, it can be safely estimated that in 2015 India produced 650 articles in LIS including articles on bibliometrics and related areas. The letter is just to make LIS professionals aware about the real scenario.