Webometric Analysis of Institutions Involve in Environmental Science Related Research Publications in Sri Lanka (2003-2013)

Abstract

Webometrics is a new field of bibliometrics, which originated in 2004. Webometrics mainlyuse bibliometric techniques in order study the relationship of different sites on the WorldWide Web (www). Local and international online journals become very popular amongscientists, as an effective place to publish their research articles. Therefore new technologicaland statistical approaches (such as Web Impact Factors) were introduced to evaluate theseexpanding online publication systems. In this study webometric concepts were applied to theWorld Wide Web, to analyse the quantity (number of papers) and impact (citation indexes) ofSri Lankan research institutions in environment science sector.

Environmental science is a multidisciplinary subject and, the definitions for environmentalscience depend on particular country, institutions and journals. For this research environmentscience was defined by using eighteen (18) key subjects. Based on those key words, onlinedata collection of Google Scholar was done with “Harzing's Publish or Perish-version 4.0.12”software, using a ten (10) year time window (2003-2013). Data collection was done up toindividual author level and for an each author, number of publications, number of citations,citation per paper, citation per year, citation per author,h-index, annual h-index werecalculated. Self-citations were manually omitted from the system. Based on the results eachinstitution was estimated quantitatively (using number of publications, authors) andqualitatively (using citation indexes, h- index).

The Study analysed 41 Sri Lankan research institutions, and 25 of them producedenvironment science related research publications. It included 867 scientists in 14 localuniversities and 220 scientists belong to other research institutions. According to the results53.35% of Sri Lankan online research publications (2003-2013) belonged to EnvironmentScience.The average number of environment science related research publications publishedby a Sri Lankan university was 25.03 papers per year. The annual citation of a university was79.17. Average values for citation per paper and, citation per author were 2.23 and 5.76.Average annual h-index of a Sri Lankan university was 4.09. Other research institutions hadcomparatively lower values. Average number of environment science related researchpublications per institution per year was 4.92 papers and annual citation per institution was19.60 papers. Average values for citation per paper and citation per author were 4.68 and3.93. Obtained annual h-index value was 0.35

Highest contribution for the Sri Lankan online research publication sector was given by theuniversities rather than the other semi-government and non-government research institutions.Quantity and the quality of the research publications of particular institution depend on manyfactors; such as number of researchers, importance of their research field, number of online journals published or contributed by the institution, reputation of the researchers and theinstitution, amount of annual investment allocating for research purposes and several otherfactors.