Mapping the Research output on Seismic studies: An Inter-Continental metric study

Abstract

Quantitative study of a particular discipline has been and become the core area of metric studies in the inter-disciplined Library and Information Science research arena. The present study presents a metric analysis of global seismic research output for the period 1996-2015. The data is collected from Scopus Database. A total of 1, 63,821 publications were contributed by 163 countries with the per capita productivity of 1005. The data were exported to MS Excel for analysis. The study reveals that :European continent tops the list with 58190 documents (35.51%) followed by Asian continent with 55, 513 (33.88%) documents and North American Continent with 35764 (21.83%) documents.There is no correlation between number of countries in a continent and number of records. 42 countries in European continent have contributed 58190 documents altogether. Italy is in the first position with 8807 (15.13%) documents followed by UK with 8744 (15.03%) documents and France with 8068 (13.86%) documents.47 countries of Asian continent have produced 55510 documents leaving the per capital productivity to be 1181 documents. China tops the continent list with 50.52% (28046) of total Asian seismic research output followed by Japan with 7276 (13.11%) documents and Russian Federation with 5289 (9.53%) documents.Six countries in the continent have published 6823 documents. Australia, being the leader, has a lion’s share in the seismic research with 4735 (69.40%) documents. A total of 7289 records on seismic studies were published by 12 countries of South America. Brazil is the most productive country with 38.47% (1650) of total South American seismic research output followed by Argentina with 1012 (23.60%) documents.35 countries of African continent have published 3275 documents with a per capita productivity of just 81.88 records. South Africa is the most productive country in the continent with 838 (25.59%) publications followed by Egypt with 755 (23.05%) publications.USA, the most prolific country on seismic research, has 79.79% (28320) of total North American seismic research output followed by Canada with 5578 (15.60%) documents.United States is the most prolific country with 28320 publications constituting 23.64% of total seismic productivity followed by China with 28046 documents (23.41%). These two countries alone have contributed 47.05 % of world research output on seismic studies.