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Permalink Reply by Siddhartha Shankar Ray on April 18, 2013 at 19:29

Dear Dr. Chintha Nagabhushanam,

Thanks for your post and providing some very important references. As I know that Publish or Perish is a priced material and SITKIS requires access to citation databases. I wonder whether the first three materials are free and if yes, how can one utilize them without using the Citation (or related) databases? As I understand those databases  are extremely costly and never-the-less only a handful of Institutes are subscribing to them. I am personally interested because Scientometrics is my field of interest and a few of my present works are stuck up lately for want of the databases. 

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta

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Permalink Reply by Siddu on April 18, 2013 at 23:26

Sir,

SPSS is not a 'Bibliometric Specific' software.

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Permalink Reply by Siddhartha Shankar Ray on April 19, 2013 at 7:25

Dear Sri Siddu.

You are absolutely correct. In this case, at the best one can do with the SPSS package is statistical analysis but one must have the Citation data and have a well devised sets of variables & parameters as prerequisite. Getting access to citation databases is rather difficult. Buying them Institutionally too is quite expensive and it is extremely difficult to justify buying these databases. I did some bits of Scientometric studies myself long back while I got the SCI database on CD (there was no Scopus those days!!) as a personal gift from Dr. Garfield.

Later in late 90's when I wrote in Current Science, (a mainstream Science journal published fortnightly by Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore)  I concentrated on Impact Factors only on the basis of JCR.which is more easily available being cheaper in cost. However, as I personally believe, that in case one tries hard and with sincerity & conviction, one can get good result. Because in that paper i proposed an easy formula to tentatively assess institutional performance & as I understand many institutes are still using it. 

I have no idea what Sri Sarvanan is going to do but in case it is not strictly based upon citation analysis, he can try alternative sources.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta

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Permalink Reply by saravanan on April 20, 2013 at 5:31

Dear sir/Friends,

                   Thank you for your response.I have to do my research in scientometric study by using sources from WEB OF SCIENCE(INFLIBNET-isiknowledge.com).

    so that i need software for analysis,which one is adopt and effective finish for that.

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Permalink Reply by Saba Sarasvdy on April 24, 2013 at 0:25

Dear All

Basically, one can first look at the requirement of analysis. What it the type of data you deal? Is it about publications, growth or impact. No specific bibliometric or statistical tool can enable you to do the exercise. For example the ALSCAL part of SPSS is useful for mapping of data. There are many many mapping and mining tools are available. Now researchers go beyond the conventional scientometric analysis. We should note that a large number of researchers now use mining tools for citation mapping and clustering of papers/authors/institutions. What I found in most of the scientometric papers (from India) is the lack of original methodology/ theory etc. Conceptual level understanding is coming down.

This discussion seems to be interesting and contributive.

Saba Sarasvady

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