Journal productivity in economics

Abstract

A bibliography in economics consisting of 4130 articles from 744 journals i s examined to study the scattering of articles in various journals. It has been observed that the empirical distribution of articles is reverse-J shape with a long tail and distribution is highly positively skewed. Further, it has been observed that 99 % of the journals contain 90 % o f the articles. Only one percent of the journals contribute nearly 10 % of the periodical literature in economics. This study suggest that the negative binomial distribution does not fit the empirical distribution of articles in economics. However, it fits very well to the truncated data (without the data pertaining to the most productive journals). It fits equally well to the most (12 out of 15) o f the frequency distributions of articles in homoqeneous group of subjects (i.e. in-the subdivisions of economics). - This study further suggests that the rank distribution of journals i n economics does not confirm to the perfect Bradford's log-linear model. The shape of the Bradford curve for the economics data is S-shape and Groos droop exist. Leimkuhler's model as such doesn't fit the data. However, Leimkuhler's model as expressed by F(x) = a * log ( I t bx), where a and b are constants and F(x) i s the number of articles contained in x top most journals, give rise to a good result when Egghe's algorithm t o compute Bradford multiplier Qk), and the parameters a and b is used. A simple procedure to compute k (by assuming the nmber o f journals i n the nucleus ( r p ) i s equal to one and considering the nmber of articles (yo) it contains) also gives rise to a good approximat-on for the rank distribution of journals. A few applications of bibliometric studies are discussed i n the context of special libraries in India. A core list of journals in economics is compiled.