An Evaluative Study on Citation Patterns of Sankhyá

Abstract

This study analyses 3750 citations appended to 199 peer-reviewed articles published in Sankhya during 2003 to 2007. Critical examinations have been made on average citations occurred in each publication, various source materials cited, highly cited keywords, frequently cited journals, and identifying the core journals in statistical research. Bradfor’s scattering of cited journals (zonal distribution) has also been carried out. Findings reveal that an average of 18.84 cited references were appended in each publication, and thereby reinforces the proposition of discipline oriented citation behavior of scholarly literatures. The paper illustrates wide variety of source materials, where journal-articles get cited predominantly and the citation of web-resources is very poor; thus citation behavior of Sankhya exhibits a close resemblance with the usual practice of S and T journals. It suggests an average of five keywords to be transcribed by the authors in each article. The study identifies a total of 2732 journal-citations in 372 unique titles, thus journal citation density is derived as 7.35. In fact top 12 journals have contributed more than 50% citations, subsequently top five (core journals) received more than one-third (34%) of the total journal-citations. Annals of Statistics is the most highly cited journal; followed by JASA, Biometrika, JRSS-B, and Annals of Mathematical Statistics. Bradford’s plot (cumulative citations vs. logarithm of journal ranks) presents a deviation of classical S curve. Above all Sankhya could stake claim as one of the most authoritative source of scholarly literatures on statistics and allied areas of research.