MAPPING OF RUBBER PLANT RESEARCH IN INDIA: A SCIENTOMETRIC STUDY : A Scientometric Study

Scientometrics - Related fields of Study The bibliometric analyses first ever have been carried out by librarians (Cole and Eales 1917; Gross and Gross 1927). As a new discipline of library and information sciences bibliometrics has been developed as a tool for measuring and monitoring scientific output. This has opened the door for new scopes of application and bibliometrics is gradually transformed into scientometrics. Scientometrics is the study dealing with the qualification of written communication which helps in the measurement of the published knowledge. Scientometrics studies are gradually becoming interdisciplinary in nature and are used to identify the pattern of publication authorship and citation analysis with the hope that such regularities can give an insight into the dynamics under consideration. The term ‘Scientometrics’ often used synonymously as ‘Bibliometrics’ which originated in Russia is a quantitative method of application in measuring science involves counting artifacts to the production and use of information and arriving at conclusions from the counts (Devarajan1997). The terms like ‘Librametrics’ ‘Bibliometrics’ ‘Informetrics’ and ‘Scientometrics’ have been used synonymously to study the growth of publication literature in a discipline and other aspects of literature quantitatively.