GIS Research in India from : A Bibliometric Contemplation

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1 Special Issue on Bibliometric & Scientometric Studies GIS Research in India from : A Bibliometric Contemplation Pragya Pandey DLIS, S P University, Anand Physical Research Laboratory Unit of Dept. of Space, GOI Ahmedabad-India Dr. Urmila A Thaker Professor Emeritus, UGC, Department of Library and Information Science S P University, Anand thaker_urmila@yahoo.co.in Abstract The study investigates the growth of Geographical Information System (GIS) research publication contributions made by Indian scientists during the period The source considered is the Web of Science (WoS) database, together with Bibliometric analysis techniques. All items provided by WoS have been taken into account in the analysis (journal papers, conference proceedings, etc.). This Bibliometric analysis summarizes output, categorical, geographical, and institutional patterns, as well as research hotspots in GIS studies. This study finds out that GIS experienced notable 9750% growth in the past two decades, the qualitative parameters of this growth are depicted in this paper along with the quantitative factors analysed through Bibliometric tools and techniques. Keywords- GIS, Geographic Information System, Bibliometrics, INDIA 1. Preamble: Geographic information systems (GIS) are computerized systems for the storage, retrieval, manipulation, analysis and display of geographically referenced data. Goodchild (1991) says that GIS is a system which uses a spatial database to provide answers to queries of a geographical nature. USGS (United States Geological Survey) defines GIS as In the strictest sense, a GIS is a computer system capable of assembling, storing, manipulating, and displaying geographically referenced information, i.e. data identified according to their locations. According to the ESRI (Earth Science Research Institute), GIS is a system of computer software, hardware and data, and personal to help manipulate, analyze and present information that is tided to spatial data. In more detailed context, the INHS (Illinois Natural History Survey) says that A Geographic Information System (GIS) is an organized collection of computer hardware, software, geographic data, and personnel designed to capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information. This System allows users to perform very difficult, time consuming, or otherwise impractical spatial analyses. The GIS came into being in the 60 s era, grew a little till the 80 s and over the last two decades the GIS have eventually developed into a versatile tool applied to different research fields like hydrology, agriculture, remote sensing, geology, social sciences and engineering. A general glance at the literature will make us realize that in comparison to the conventional fields, the GIS field is quite nascent and though it has progressed manifolds during past few years, it still needs new heights 144 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

2 to conquer in India. Progress in research is important and so is its periodic assessment, to know in which direction the field is moving and how the funds and resources of the Nation be put to best use. Scientometric techniques are used to evaluate the quantitative and qualitative nature of research. Such studies are being performed regularly to assess the developments in any given field. In the field of GIS there have been a few such works where the global output in GIS research has been evaluated 4,5, though no such study solely on India has been conducted till date. It is felt that owing to the growing importance of this field such a study is essentially required. This work aims at assessing and evaluating the status of research output in GIS in India for the period Aims of the Study: To determine the Growth trend of GIS research output during the period To assess the distribution of GIS research output in various subject categories as identified by WoS and their citation impacts. To assess the distribution of GIS research output in various Journals To determine top authors for the period of study To determine the top contributing Institutions in the Field of GIS To evaluate the research performance using citation data. To find out top most cited publication of this period. To find out the collaboration pattern with other countries To analyze the distribution of Author keywords and find out the more focused areas of research 3. Methodology Database and Scope Web of Science (WoS) is the most important and frequently used source database for the review of scientific achievement in all research fields (Bayer & Folger, 1966; Kostoff, 2000), the same database was used to measure the growth of research publication on GIS and locate and collect the literature. The Search Strategy used was to search for ( Geograp* Information Sys* ') OR ( GIS ) in the TOPIC, which was further refined by English in Languages, India in Countries/Territories and in Time span. The Indexes used for the search were SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI. 4. Results and Analysis The search of the WoS using the above mentioned parameters fetched out 1488 publications. This publication data was analysed using several Bibliometric indicators. The results of the analysis are mentioned in the proceeding sections. 4.1 Type of Publications: 145 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

3 Figure 1.Distribution of types of documents during the period for Indian GIS research Figure 1 above shows the distribution of the publications in the field of Geographic Information System (GIS) by Indian authors during the period Total 1488 publications consists of articles-1419 (95.36%), review- 46 (3.09%) proceedings - 36(2.41%), editorials - 11(0.73%), meeting abstracts - 6 (0.40) and letters - 4 (0.26%). Document Type Publication % Publication Citation CPP Article Review Proceedings Paper Editorial Material Meeting Abstract Letter CPP: Citation per paper. Source: Web of Science (WoS) Table1: Citation rates across different types of documents It is important to note that from the data in Table 1. the Review articles tend to attract the highest citation rates (17.65). Although document type Articles has the highest no. of publications but ranks 3rd in the Citation Per Paper (hereafter CPP), Editorial Materials with Meeting Abstract papers attracting the lowest counts. 4.2 Scholarly Impact of GIS Research during Citation-based indicators Number Total Article found: 1488 Sum of the Times Cited Sum of Times Cited without self-citations 9146 Citing Articles 7877 Citing Articles without self-citations 7205 Average Citations per Item International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

4 h-index 44 Table 2: Citation Metrics of GIS research in India The publications by the Indian scientists for the period received a total of citations (Table. 2) during the 25 year period with an average of about 7.39 citations per paper and an h index of 7.39, implying a reasonably good quality of research. 4.3 Growth rate of GIS research during the period Fig 2: Growth of Number of Publications in GIS in India during The annual number of publications in GIS increased from 2 (0.134 %) in 1991 to 197( %) in 2014 which illustrated a meteoric growth in the number of publications. In mathematical terms the Growth Rate of this data set can be illustrated as Growth Rate = Present Past / Past * 100 = 197-2/2* 100 = 9750 % Thus the growth rate of research publications in GIS is 9750% which is very huge rate of increase. This also means that the number of papers in 1991 grew 97.5 times in 2014 as depicted in fig-3. The average annual growth rate is 120% as depicted below: Annual Average Growth Rate = ((Present/Past) 1/n 1} * 100 Where n = number of years 147 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

5 Therefore, Average Annual GR in this case will be {(197/2) 1/25 1} * 100 (98.5) = 0.20 * 100 = 20% This shows that the research publications on GIS have increased at an average rate of 20 percent per year over a period of 25 years. 4.4 Growth trend of Research in GIS during Figure 3: Growth trend of GIS research in India during The growth curve indicates an exponential increase though the best fit comes out to be that of a second degree power law. The data shows a very high coefficient of determination (R² = 0.979), indicating a high rate of increase in the number of publications. The polynomial best fit as shown in the Figure 4 for GIS 148 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

6 research was found to be: y = 0.467x x + 2E+06, where y is the cumulative number of publications and x is the number of years since Citation pattern of publications during study period Figure 4: Publication vs Citations 1488 publications on GIS received a total of citations. Figure 4 depicts the year wise total number of publications and the citations received per paper per year. From this figure we can infer that the two variables i.e. the number of publications and the citations received are independent of each other, these two rise and fall separately and no apparent relation is found. It is important to mention that there are just two publications in 1992 and the number of citations is 135, it is assumed that this may be due to the field being nascent or the quality of research done at that time. However the highest number of papers are in the year 2014, the maximum citations date back to the year 2007 i.e. 1248, this shows the research impact of the research done in that year. 4.6 Subject Categories: 149 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

7 Figure 5: Comparison of Growth trends of the top eight productive subject categories Based on the classification of subject categories in the Web of Science, GIS research covered 111 subject categories. Top 10 subject categories were Environmental Sciences (450), Geosciences Multidisciplinary (349), Remote Sensing (292), Water Resources (280), Multidisciplinary Sciences (162), Engineering Civil (108), Imaging Science Photographic Technology (106) Meteorology Atmospheric Sciences (86), Ecology (54) and Engineering Electrical Electronic (49). Figure 5 demonstrated annual growth chart of articles of top 10 subject categories. The number of articles in environmental sciences & ecology leaped to third in 2010 from fifth in This showed the recent emphasis on remote sensing research in imaging science & photographic technology and environmental sciences & ecology. The visible changes in the number of articles among the subject categories symbolizes the frequent shift in research focus during the period of study. 4.7 Top 20 WoS Subject categories and their citation impact Web of Science Categories TP % of TP TC Avg.C Environmental Sciences Geosciences Multidisciplinary Remote Sensing Water Resources Multidisciplinary Sciences Engineering Civil Imaging Science Photographic Technology Meteorology Atmospheric Sciences Ecology Engineering Electrical Electronic Geography Physical Public Environmental Occupational Health Agronomy Engineering Environmental Agriculture Multidisciplinary Computer Science Interdisciplinary Applications International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

8 Environmental Studies Biodiversity Conservation Geography Urban Studies TP: Total Publication; TC: Total Citation; Avg.C: Average citation per paper per year Table 3: Top 20 WoS Subject categories and their citation impact The Table above shows the citation impact of top 20 subject categories according to the web of Science subject categories. It is seen from the above table that the subject categories Agriculture Multidisciplinary has the highest average impact (Avg.C=17.22) although the subject category Environmental Sciences has the highest no. of publication (450) with highest citation (2641) but ranked 17 th in the Agv.C index. 4.8 Top Institutions and their research impact Institution TNA (%) TC AgC h-index Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee Indian Inst Remote Sensing Indian Institute of Technology Iit Bombay Natl Remote Sensing Ctr Jawaharlal Nehru University Indian Institute Of Science IISc Banglore Anna University Natl Inst Hydrol Ministry Of Earth Sciences Moes India Indian Agricultural Research Institute Birla Inst Technol National Geophysical Research Institute India National Environmental Engineering Res.Inst. India Geological Survey India Natl Bur Soil Survey Land Use Planning Aligarh Muslim University Teri Univ Kumaun University Indian Institute of Technology Madras International Crops Research Institute For The Semi Arid Tropics Icrisat Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Table 4: The distribution of the 1488 articles over the Top 20 Institutions and their research impact TNA= Total no. of GIS related articles published by an institution; TC = Total no. of citation received ; AgCPA= Average no. of citations per article; h-index=defined by the no. of h papers among an institution s no. of publications that have at least h citations each. 151 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

9 Table 4 shows the top 20 productive institutions during years These 20 top institutions had published 732 papers out of the 1488 total publications on GIS during this period. IIT Kharagpur tops the list of in number of publications, total citation counts, average citations and h index, this data shows how good the research in GIS is at IIT Kharagpur both in quantitative and qualitative terms. Other notable contributions are from IIT Roorkee (4.427%), IIRS (4.359) and IIT Bombay (4.159%). Out of twenty top Institutions, 5 are the IIT s, 2 Institutions belong to the Department of Space/ Indian Space Research Organization, others are Research Laboratories and Universities. It will be good to mention that Universities like Aligarh Muslim University, Jawaharlal Nehru University have very good results and seem quite at par with the renowned Research Institutes of National Importance inspite of the general belief of Universities having less resources and funds. 4.9 Top 20 Journals and their research impact Journal TNA(%) TC AgC Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing 170(11.424) Current Science 116(7.796) International Journal of Remote Sensing 64(4.301) Journal of the Geological Society of India 53(3.562) Water Resources Management 46(3.091) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 44(2.957) Environmental Earth Sciences 40(2.688) Arabian Journal of Geosciences 39(2.621) Natural Hazards 32(2.151) Geocarto International 26(1.747) Journal of Earth System Science 19(1.277) Hydrological Processes 17(1.142) Journal of Hydrology 16(1.075) Environmental Geology 16(1.075) Tropical Ecology 14(0.941) Hydrological Sciences Journal 14(0.941) Disaster Advances 14(0.941) Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences 11(0.739) Agricultural Water Management 11(0.738) Hydrogeology Journal 9(0.604) 54 6 IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical 9(0.604) Journal Of Hydrologic Engineering 8(0.537) Source: WoS database Table 5: Top 20 Journals and their research impact Articles on GIS appeared in 402 journals. GIS research in India appeared in highest numbers in the Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, published by the Society itself, followed by the journal Current Science. These 20 out of the 402 journals had published 788 (52.95 %) of the total 1488 articles. An 152 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

10 important point to mention here is that the Journal of Hydrology though ranks 13 th in the number of publications ranking it has the highest AvCPA(18.38) which shows that it has high impact Top 20 most Prolific Authors and impact of their research output: Author TP(%) TC TC wosc CI CIwoSC AgC h-index Roy, P.S. 29(1.949) Kumar, S. 26(1.747) Mukherjee, S. 23(1.546) Singh, R. 22(1.478) Kumar, A. 21(1.411) Chowdary, V. M. 19(1.277) Singh, C. K. 17(1.142) Reddy, C. S. 17(1.142) Dadhwal, V. K. 17(1.142) Vijith, H 16(1.075) Singh S 15(1.008) Kumar R 15(1.008) Srivastava PK 14(0.941) Pandey A 14(0.941) Kushwaha SPS 14(0.941) Srivastava A 13(0.874) Panigrahy S 13(0.874) Mal BC 13(0.874) Ghosh S 3(0.874) Chandrasekar N 13(0.874) Table 6: Top 20 most Prolific Authors and impact of their research output (3272) TNA(%): Total no. of GIS related articles published by an author (followed by percentage of GIS related articles by a author of the total GIS related article) TC: Total no. of citation; TC wosc: Sum of Times Cited without self-citations; CI: Citing Articles ; CIwoSC: Citing Articles without self-citations; AgC: Average Citations per Article; h-index :h articles cited at least h times The 1488 counts on GIS have been contributed by 3272 authors. Table 6 showed the top 20 productive authors during the 23 year period. These 20 out of the 3272 authors had published 344 (23%) of the total 1488 publications. Top 20 productive authors were ranked based on the number of publications. Out of these 20 productive authors, Roy, P.S. produced maximum publications 29 (1.949 %) followed by Kumar, S. 26 (1.747 %), Mukherjee, S. 23(1.546%) respectively. It is seen from the above table that GIS related articles authored by Chowdary, V. M. have the highest average impact (AvgCPA=20.84) followed by Mal BC (AvgCPA=16.92) and though Roy, P.S. leads the list in number of publication, is ranked 4th in the Agv.C index Top 10 highly cited papers in GIS research in India during Sl.No. Bibliography TC 1 Xiao, X. M., Boles, S., Frolking, S., Li, C. S., Babu, J. Y., Salas, W., & Moore, B. 165 (2006). Mapping paddy rice agriculture in South and Southeast Asia using multi- 153 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

11 temporal MODIS images. Remote Sensing of Environment, 100(1), PACHAURI, A., & PANT, M. (1992). LANDSLIDE HAZARD MAPPING BASED ON GEOLOGICAL ATTRIBUTES. Engineering Geology, 32(1-2), Kanungo, D. P., Arora, M. K., Sarkar, S., & Gupta, R. P. (2006). A comparative study of conventional, ANN black box, fuzzy and combined neural and fuzzy weighting procedures for landslide susceptibility zonation in Darjeeling Himalayas. Engineering Geology, 85(3-4), Saha, A. K., Gupta, R. P., & Arora, M. K. (2002). GIS-based Landslide Hazard Zonation in the Bhagirathi (Ganga) Valley, Himalayas. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 23(2), Saraf, A. K., & Choudhury, P. R. (1998). Integrated remote sensing and GIS for groundwater exploration and identification of artificial recharge sites. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 19(10), Prakash, A., & Gupta, R. P. (1998). Land-use mapping and change detection in a coal mining area - a case study in the Jharia coalfield, India. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 19(3), Krishnamurthy, J., Kumar, N. V., Jayaraman, V., & Manivel, M. (1996). An approach to demarcate ground water potential zones through remote sensing and a geographical information system. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 17(10), Saha, A.K., Gupta, R.P., Sarkar, I., Arora, M.K. & Csaplovics, E. (2005). An approach for GIS-based statistical landslide susceptibility zonation - with a case study in the Himalayas. Landslides, 2(1), doi: /s Sarkar, S. and Kanungo, D.P. (2004). An integrated approach for landslide susceptibility mapping using remote sensing and GIS. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 70(5) Jaiswal,.R.K., Mukherjee, S., Krishnamurthy, J. & Saxena, (2003) R. Role of remote sensing and GIS techniques for generation of groundwater prospect zones towards rural development - an approach. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 24(5), doi: / Style: APA (6 th ed) Table 7: Top 10 highly cited papers in GIS research in India during The highest cited article during the 23 year period of study is Mapping paddy rice agriculture in South and Southeast Asia using multi-temporal MODIS images. It is authored by Xiao, X. M., Boles, S., Frolking, S., Li, C. S., Babu, J. Y., Salas, W., & Moore, B. It appeared in 2006 in the journal Remote Sensing of Enviorment and has been cited 165 times Globalization of GIS Research in India: International Collaborations and Geographic Distribution of Publications 154 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

12 Countries TP % TC AvgCPA h-index USA Germany Netherlands England Australia Canada France Malaysia Japan Iran Brazil South Africa South Korea Switzerland Saudi Arabia Peoples R China Nepal Kenya Scotland Ethiopia Table 8: Countries working collaboratively with Indian institutions on GIS during period Based on the author collaborations, we can map the world-wide geographic distribution of GIS research publication in collaboration with India. The major spatial clusters of research institutes are located in North America and Europe, followed by East Asia. Several minor clusters are distributed in other parts of the world. Africa and South America have relatively less research collaborations with India. Out of 72 Countries/territories which participated in GIS research, United States has the maximum no. of collaboration (89) followed by Germany (39), Netherlands (32) and England (32). Out of rest, 38 have 1 2 collaborations, 12 have 3 10 and 7 have collaborations respectively. It is seen from the Table 8 that GIS related articles authored in France have the highest average impact (Avg.C=24.07) and though the USA is 1 st in the number of publications, it ranks 6 th in the Agv.C index. Data pertaining to this shows that collaborative research has become more prevalent and various countries have come together to contribute towards the advancement of the GIS field, this data shows how in spite of India being a developing Nation has very well collaborated with the developed countries to expand its research in GIS Analysis of author keywords Keywords TP Water 353 Land 349 Remote Sensing 303 Model 271 Soil International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

13 Groundwater 149 Area 131 Basin 118 River 106 Watershed 106 Erosion 94 Himalaya 92 Region 81 Diversity 78 Dem 69 Conservation 68 Sediment 61 Pollution 55 District 54 Prediction 52 Biodiversity 51 Classification 51 Runoff 50 Aquifer 49 Catchment 49 Vegetation 47 Simulation 42 Identification 38 Imagery 28 Western Ghats 24 Table 9: 30 most used keywords during the considered period Keywords data obtained from the WoS indicates towards the hot areas of research. Their in-depth analysis helps in understanding the thought content of the publications thus giving us a clear picture of the research trends in any given field of research. In this study, a total of 5556 different keywords, from 1991 to 2014 in the GIS were identified, of these only 4934 were unique key words. To obtain accurate results, the keywords were pre-processed, singular and plural keywords like geographic information system and geographic information systems were merged similarly synonyms/similar forms of words like climatic change and climate change and ground water and groundwater were counted as single keyword. Among these keywords 4161 appear once or 611 appear twice at the most. The results as shown in the table above indicate that GIS research has extensively been carried out in the fields of Water, Land, Remote Sensing, Soils so and so forth. The figure 6 below shows how the research trends have changed over the 23 year period and how the top 10 keywords have gained importance. 156 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

14 Figure 6: Evolution of top 10 author used keyword in GIS Research during Conclusion: An overview of the research from Indian contributions in the field of GIS has been presented with the information related to annual publications, journals, institutions, countries, and the evolution of keyword frequencies during the period It is important to note that the subject has grown manifolds during this period with the number of publications beginning from 2 in 1991 to 197 in the year In total 1488 publications were derived for the investigation period. The conclusions that this study points out at are: (1) GIS related research has significantly increased in the last 23 years. A second degree power law model has been able to illustrate the relations between cumulative number of publications and the year wise growth. (2) A total of 402 journals/proceedings and others have published 1488 articles on GIS. The most active journal was Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing It is important to mention here that most of the top 20 productive journals are foreign journals, which shows the inclination of Indian scientists to publish more in the foreign journals than the Indian ones. (3) The top twenty institutions contributing to the GIS research in India comprise of the IIT s, it is worth noting that specific institutions for Remote Sensing and GIS have lesser number of publications whereas presumably this number should be more than the more general Institutions and Universities. (4) Regarding the factor pertaining to the globalization of GIS Research in India, there were 72 Countries/territories which participated in the GIS research. United States has the maximum no. of collaboration (89) followed by Germany (39), Netherlands (32) and England (32). This data significantly symbolises the preference of Indian scientists for collaboration with the authors in the US. 157 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016

15 (5) The keyword analysis of the studied publications revealed the hot directions of the research trends in the GIS. The most used keywords Water, Land, Remote Sensing, Model, Soil, Groundwater, etc give an idea of the GIS strength in the current research scene, especially in the recent years. This study significantly points that the research in the GIS has grown immensely and has reached far and wide to the general public in form of studies being carried out in the academic institutions like the IIT s and the Universities. The 9750% increase which seems to be a monstrous figure to believe, in the rise of number of publications during 1991 to 2014 justifies the relevance of this study and the keyword analysis indicates towards the ripe research areas and the gaps in the field. This study signifies that the GIS research has travelled a long path at very fast pace and still has a long way to go. It is suggested that if the renowned Indian scientists start preferring Indian journals, it will attract higher impact to our journals as well paving a path for better research and exposure to the global readership. References 1. Definition of GISystem, Available at: 2. Goodchild, M.F. (1992) Geographical Information Science, International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, Vol. 6. pp Goodchild, M.F. (1991) Geographical Data Modelling, Computers and Geosciences, Vol. 18, pp Wenting X, Yangge T, Shuang D (2009) Comparison of GIS papers between SCI and EI databases using bibliometric analysis, The 1st International Conference on Information Science and Engineering (ICISE2009), pp : Available at 5. Yangge T, Cheng W, Song H. (2009) Global scientific production on GIS research by Bibliometric analysis from , Journal of Informetrics 2, Vol. 2, pp Follow us on: IRJLIS, Facebook, Twitter 158 International Research: Journal of Library & Information Science Vol.6 No.1, March, 2016