A CITATION ANALYSIS OF THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF OPHTHALMOLOGY (2003–2019): OUTPUT, AUTHORSHIP, COLLABORATION, SUBJECT AND GEOGRAPHICAL PATTERNS

Abstract

Citation analysis is among the most established techniques of bibliometric research, revealing the intellectual structure, communication behaviour and information-use patterns of a research community. This study reports a citation analysis of the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology (IJO), the official peer-reviewed publication of the All India Ophthalmological Society, covering the period 2003–2019. A cleaned, de-duplicated corpus of 2,009 source articles carrying 27,511 cited references was analysed for year-wise distribution, authorship pattern, author productivity, degree of collaboration, dominant subject facets and geographical distribution of contributors. Annual output nearly trebled from 78 articles in 2003 to a peak of 226 in 2018, while the mean reference list lengthened from about 12 to a high of 19.4 references per article. Multi-authored papers dominate (70.3% of the corpus against 12.4% single-authored), yielding an overall degree of collaboration of 0.85 by Subramanyam’s measure. Author productivity is highly skewed in the manner predicted by Lotka’s inverse-square law, with a compact core of prolific investigators sustaining a disproportionate share of output. Retina and Vitreous is the dominant subject facet (33.7%), followed by cataract, cornea and glaucoma. India supplies 71.8% of contributions, with a diverse international stream from more than 38 countries. The findings characterise IJO as a mature, high-output, strongly collaborative national research platform with meaningful international reach.