Mapping of Stellar and Galactic Astrophysics Research in India: A Scientometric Analysis

ABSTRACT

The present investigation explores the features of the research publications on stellar and galactic astrophysics research in India during the last 20 years, based on the Web of Science Core Collection and its implications using the scientometric techniques. The R program, VOS-viewer software, and Webometric Analyst 2.0 were used for the analysis. The results of this investigation unveil that the literature on the stellar and galactic astrophysics has grown exponentially during this period reaching 4352 papers in total. A network visualization map revealed that “galaxies: active”, “stars: neutron”, “galaxies: evolution“, “galaxies: ism“ and “radio continuum: galaxies“ were the most frequently used keywords. The study identified the key scientometric indicators such as publications, authors, journals, countries, institutions, citation, and co-citation analysis. “Tata Institute of Fundamental Research” (TIFR) is the most extensive institutional contributor publishing 26.03% of the papers. Srianand R is the most published author with 143 publications. India has the most significant scientific collaboration with the USA. “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” is the most publishing journal with 1434 published papers having 25,853 citations. The total number of citations received is 1,13,860 citations, giving a ratio for the “Average Citations per Item” as 26.16 and “h-index” as 115. The highest “Altmetric Attention Score” received for an article is 2411.

KEYWORDS:

• Scientometrics
• Visualization
• Co-citation analysis
• Coauthorship analysis
• Vos Viewer
• Altmetrics Attention Score

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge inspiring discussions with Dr. K. Nagaraju, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, India.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.