Contributions of Pakistan Authors

Contributions of Pakistani authors to foreign library and information science journals
An evaluative study
Zahiruddin Khurshid
Cataloging Operations Department,
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals,
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
Purpose – In addition to quantitative analysis, the purpose of this paper is to measure the quality of articles published in foreign LIS journals by Pakistani authors based on their Impact Factor (IF) scores reported in the Journal Citation Reports ( JCR) of 2010; also to discuss the significance and implications of this study for the current and potential authors in Pakistan and other developing countries.
Design/methodology/approach – The data for this study were collected from two sets of sources: first, online sources of Google Scholar, LISA, LISTA, an online 50-year cumulative index of Pakistani
LIS literature, and web pages of several authors; and second, printed indexes and bibliographies. The data collected were manually entered into MS Excel for tabulation and created nine tables, which formed the basis of discussion in the paper.
Findings – The contribution of Pakistani authors to foreign LIS journals is reasonable in number and below average in quality, according to the JCR IF scores. The authorship patterns show that there is a shift from single-authorship to collaborative authorship. The contribution of academics is several times higher than that of library practitioners. Likewise the non-resident Pakistani authors’ share in the global LIS literature is much larger as compared to their counterparts living in Pakistan.
Originality/value – This is the first study that evaluates the quality of Pakistani LIS literature using the more popular journal ranking method, JCR IF. The results of this study are expected to have a positive impact on Pakistani authors as they start preparing articles according to the quality requirements of JCR-ranked journals in the future.
Keywords Pakistan, Authorship, Journals, Research work, Pakistani authors,
Non-resident Pakistani authors, LIS literature in Pakistan, JCR IF, Impact factor, LIS journals ranking,
Journal quality measuring tools
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In his foreword to the author’s compilation, Ten Years’ Work in Librarianship in
Pakistan, 1973-1982, an Index of Library and Information Science Literature
(Khurshid, 1983), Kaser termed the current index and its preceding indexes as a comprehensive record of the endeavors and deliberations of Pakistani librarianship and found them impressive. Commenting on these indexes he further said, “not only did Pakistani librarianship flourish at home, but it also exported its expertise to other nations abroad. Pakistani names have been found in abundance on the rosters of libraries and of library schools elsewhere on the subcontinent, in Europe and the UK, in
North America, and especially widespread in many parts of the Arab sphere. They have provided more than their share of the professional literature published in many
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0001-253X.htm Contributions of Pakistani authors 441
Aslib Proceedings: New Information
Perspectives
Vol. 65 No. 4, 2013 pp. 441-460 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0001-253X
DOI 10.1108/-AP-04-2012-0038 countries other than their homeland” (Kaser, 1983). It is true that hundreds of articles have been produced by Pakistani authors not only on the topics related to library and information services (LIS) in Pakistan, but also on the current trends, and emerging concepts in library and information services, library education, information technology and others, mostly in the context of libraries of the Middle East and Southeast Asia where many Pakistani library practitioners and academics are currently working in reputable libraries or teaching in library schools.
The previous studies on LIS literature in Pakistan and Bangladesh or in a region, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have generally dealt with numbers (most published authors, subjects covered, output by period, and others). The author found a big research gap between bibliometric studies dealing with the quantity and the need for undertaking research studies on the quality of LIS literature in
Pakistan and decided to take the first step towards bridging this gap. The present study aims to measure the quality of articles based on Impact Factor (IF) scores of LIS journals reported in Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports ( JCR) of 2010. In addition, the purpose is also to discuss the significance and implications of this study on the current and potential authors in Pakistan and other developing countries, research quality, public awareness, library education and others.
Literature review
The author searched several online sources, including LISA, LISTA, Google Scholar, and web pages of some authors, and printed Indexes, abstracts, and bibliographies, to find articles of three types:
(1) A feature research article on LIS literature of general nature or, related to a particular country or region, in order to use its format as an example for the present article. The author checked several articles, but picked one bySadat-Moosavi et al. (2012)) as an example to follow. It is current, well structured, and above all published in the Aslib Proceedings.
(2) The articles that provide arguments in favor and against the use of IF as a tool for judging the quality of journals.
(3) Bibliometric studies of LIS literature of a specific country or region.
It was very difficult to select articles on the use of JCR IF because they are too many.
Among them, the author found two excellent articles (Xia, 2012) and (Amin and Mabe,
2007) providing better explanation of IF and its pros and cons. A number of other relevant articles consulted include the one by Ewing (2006), who presents a history of impact factor, gives its limitation and suggests alternative measuring tools. With regard to country specific studies, including Pakistan, Usmani (1985) and Naseer and
Mahmood (2009) provide an analytical review of the articles published in the Pakistan
Library Bulletin (PLB), now called Pakistan Library and Information Science Journal
(PLISJ), between 1998 and 2007. It is the only journal in the country, coming out regularly since its inception in 1968. Pakistan Journal of Library and Information
Science and Pakistani Librarian are the two relatively new journals. Anwar and Saeed
(1999) have reported that the PLISJ alone publishes 56.8 percent articles authored mostly by Pakistani librarians. Haider (1988) and Khan (1998)evaluate the Eastern
Librarian, originally a Pakistani journal published from Dacca since 1966 and continued its publication even after Bangladesh became an independent country in
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1971. Although they have retained the title and kept the same volume numbering, it is a Bangladeshi journal. The bibliometric study of Mahmood (1996) reviews journal articles on the various aspects of library and information services in Pakistan, published in foreign journals. It differs from the present study on two counts. First, it includes only the articles written on Pakistan not only by Pakistani authors but also by foreign authors. Second, the quality issue of the works of Pakistani authors is not addressed. Similarly the bibliometric study by Anwar and Saeed (1999) also does not discuss the quality of Pakistani library literature. It is important for the new generation of authors to know the value of the prevailing methods of journal ranking and should select more of ranked journals for publishing their articles. At present, they find it easier to publish articles in the journals known for their concentration on articles from developing countries. It is appropriate to suggest that the Research methods course of the Master’s program should include a unit on the prevailing methods of evaluation of journals, including IF, Eigenfactor and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) and several others to educate potential authors about them. These methods are commonly used in
American or European libraries for multiple purposes, including “selection and cancellation decisions by librarians, the evaluation of faculty and librarians for promotion and tenure as well as annual performance reviews, manuscript submission decisions by authors by editors and publishers [. . .]” (Nisonger and Davis, 2005). The other limitation of the Anwar-Saeed study is the time period corresponding to the time coverage of LISA-PLUS which only goes as far back as 1969. The present study period starts from the year (1957), when the first Pakistani author (Abdul Rahim Khan) published his article in a foreign journal (Unesco Bulletin for Libraries). Another study from India (Patra and Chand, 2006) was reviewed to get a perspective on the contribution of Indian authors to the world library literature. The study highlights core journals published from India and reports that the Indian authors only contributed
144 articles in two foreign journals between 1967 and 2004. Another bibliometric study by Pradhan and Chandrakar (2011) reviews the Indian LIS literature in international journals. A more recent document (MU Libraries, 2012), is a webpage of the University of Missouri website providing good description of those methods. The present study uses the most commonly accepted ranking system for tenure or promotion decisions known as the Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports Impact Factor ( JCR IF). A more detailed description of this tool will be provided later.
This author found numerous articles relevant to LIS literature in Pakistan, prevailing methods for judging the quality of journals, and JCR IF, as it is evident from the number of articles cited in the paper. However, not a single article was identified that measures the quality of articles based on the JCR IF, published in foreign journals by Pakistani authors. It also proves that this is the first study on the topic.
Research aims and questions
The present study aims to provide a review of LIS literature produced by Pakistani authors, including those working or residing in other countries. A number of studies have already reviewed LIS literature in Pakistan as well mentioned under the heading, literature review. So, the research questions to be asked are: Why do we need another study? What new and significant information are we going to get from this study?
What is the rationale behind separating expatriate authors from Pakistani authors?
Why do we need to measure the quality of articles? Why to use the JCR IF only? Why
Contributions
of Pakistani authors 443 not use some other alternative methods? What are the significance or implications of the study for authors, research, teaching, and public awareness? Readers may find answers to all the above questions under relevant headings throughout this paper.
Design/methodology/approach
Data collection
Two different sets of sources were used to identify Pakistani authors and citations of their articles published in foreign journals: printed bibliographies, indexes and abstracts; and online sources.
Print sources included three indexes prepared by Khurshid’s (1965, 1972, 1983) and five online sources – LISA, LISTA, Google Scholar, an online 50-year index to library and information science literature in Pakistan covering the period from 1947 to 1997, and web pages of several authors who have placed lists of publications on the web. In the first step, the author searched LISA using the Advanced search option with the search terms “Pakistan AND Librarian OR Librarians OR Librarianship OR Libraries
OR Library” checking the abstracts of articles published between 1957 and 2011 and retrieved 499 citations. Google Scholar (GS), the most popular search engine was searched next using the command “Find articles with all of the words, “Pakistan” AND with at least one of the words” library OR librarian OR libraries OR librarianship OR librarians”, dated between 1957 and 2011 and retrieved 326 entries (see Table I). Two major features of the GS are: it is more current and provides access to co-authors better than other sources. LISTA and other online sources were also searched. After deleting duplicate and irrelevant citations, a total of 516 documents produced by 72 Pakistani authors were selected and converted their bibliographic data manually into MS Excel.
5 Data analysis
The use of Microsoft Excel to perform data analysis for bibliometric studies is common among researchers and scholars. The author also uses Excel sheets for tabulating data to create several tables for data analysis. A list of authors was printed to do author searches of LISA and LISTA and other online sources to identify any of his or her works missed out in the keyword search. A number of citations were also identified in web pages of several authors who have posted lists of their publications on the web. To insure that the data is accurate and up to date, each source was searched multiple times by using different search terms, such as author, title keyword, and individual issues of journals to verify author title, and the year of publications especially in those cases where titles are almost the same. All duplicate articles with the same author, title and text were dropped
Sources searched Citations retrieved Citations selected
LISA 499 343
Google Scholar 326 78
LISTA 419 22
Bibliographies/indexes 2,000 43
Web pages of authors 6 17
Other 25 13
Total 516
Table I.
Summary of search results AP
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444 from the list. The author is cognizant of the fact that if the data are not complete or inaccurate, the findings, discussion, and conclusions would all be wrong. Every effort was made to insure objectivity in data collection, data analysis and data interpretation.
Results
The results of this study are drawn from a large data of 500 plus articles, manually entered into Excel sheets. A total of nine tables containing the various types of collected data formed the basis of discussion of the results of this study.
Growth of LIS literature by period
The volume of LIS literature produced by Pakistani authors is reasonable considering
Pakistan a developing country. The good thing about the library literature is not the size, but the fact that it is fully indexed and well controlled bibliographically. Table II shows that during the early years of the creation of Pakistan, the contribution of Pakistani authors to foreign LIS journals was in a single digit averaging less than one article per year. Of the 13 articles published between 1947 and 1970, six articles were written by Anis
Khurshid alone. Soon he was joined by two of his able students and graduates of the LIS department at the University of Karachi – M.A. Anwar and S.J. Haider, and the three of them together contributed more than 20 articles between 1971 and 1980. During the years,
1979-1986, a small group of young and energetic second generation librarians, all graduated with Master’s and PhD degrees from library schools in the USA and UK got jobs in overseas libraries and library schools and began publishing in foreign journals as non-resident Pakistani or expatriate authors. Later a new generation of Pakistani librarians joined the rank and together they published more than 200 articles between
2006 and 2011. They are mostly graduates, students of the Master’s, MPhil, or PhD programs, and academics of the LIS Department at the University of the Punjab. These new authors are a major force behind the surge in LIS literature in Pakistan in recent years. Of the 219 articles published in the years, 2006-2011, their contribution is about
60 percent, which is highly remarkable. With these scholars and researchers around, the prospects for Pakistani authors contributing to the global library literature both in quantity and quality are very bright. However, it is very disappointing not to see the names of faculty and students as authors from LIS departments of other universities in international library literature.
Period Number of articles
1957-1960 4
1961-1965 3
1966-1970 6
1971-1975 12
1976-1980 12
1981-1985 18
1986-1990 22
1991-1995 37
1996-2000 79
2001-2005 104
2006-2011 219
Total 516
Table II.
Article output by five-year period
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of Pakistani authors 445
Collaborative authorship
In their article, “Authorship patterns in information systems”, Cunningham and Dillon
(1996) have referred to the 1963 prediction of Derek J. De Solla Price saying that “by
1980 the single author paper will be extinct”, and that scientific collaboration would continue to increase so that scholarly publications would “move steadily toward an infinity of authors per paper.” Although the first part of his prediction has turned out to be incorrect, the percentage of collaborative authorship has definitely gone up as predicted. It is also reflected in the library literature produced by Pakistani authors.
For example, in 1998, of the 23 articles published, 18 were single-authored, whereas in
2010, the number of single- authored articles went down to eight out of 33. Likewise, if we expand the time frame to cover the period of the present study from 1957 to 2011,
38 single authors have contributed 220 articles at an average of 5.78 articles per author.
Whereas 34 authors (including 18 authors who have produced both single-authored and co-authored articles) have produced 296 articles in collaboration with one or two co-authors at an average of 7.16 articles per author (see Table III). Several Pakistani authors have also collaborated with foreign authors, mostly as 2nd or 3rd in the authorship name order and have produced 115 articles together. However, we have excluded all foreign authors as this study evaluates the contributions of Pakistani authors only. There are a few advantages of collaboration with authors from different countries, cultures, and languages. For example, for a foreign author to write on any topic about a Middle Eastern country, you may need a coauthor with the knowledge of
Arabic language who can search Arabic sources to find relevant documents, he or she may even correspond with the colleagues and public and private organizations and institutions or develop a bilingual questionnaire to gather data for the study. The articles based on such collaborative efforts come out to be of better quality.
Share of non-resident Pakistani authors
Table IV shows that of the 72 Pakistani authors publishing in foreign LIS journals, only 11 are currently residing or working outside Pakistan. They were identified from
Author type
Number of authors Percentage of authors Number of articles Percentage of articles Average no. of articles per author Single author 38 52.7 220 42.63 5.78
Collaborative
authors 34 47.2 296 57.36 8.7
Total 72 516 7.16
Table III.
Contributions of single and collaborative authors
Author type
Number of authors Percentage of authors Number of articles Percentage of articles Resident Pakistani authors 61 84.7 272 52.71
Non-resident Pakistani authors 11 15.3 244 47.28
Total 72 516
Table IV.
Outputs of resident and non-resident Pakistani authors AP
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446 their organizational affiliation as part of the authorship details given in their most recent articles. In addition, a biographical directory (Sabzwari and Ansari, 2011) of
Pakistani librarians, including those working overseas, was also checked to verify author information. It is interesting to note that 11 overseas Pakistani librarians have published 47.28 percent articles in foreign journals whereas 61 resident authors have contributed a little over 52 percent. If we had not included expatriate authors in the study, the size of library literature published by Pakistani authors in foreign journals would have been reduced by about 50 percent. Some of the reasons for lower visibility of Pakistani authors, especially of resident Pakistanis in foreign journals are already highlighted by Anwar and Saeed (1999). Among them, one major reason is that the majority of authors living in Pakistan prefer to publish in local journals because of their higher acceptance rate of manuscripts as compared to those of foreign journals.
The other reason is the national spirit to support local journals. In spite of these reasons, it is surprising not to find any articles by some of the pioneers of librarianship in Pakistan, heads of LIS departments, LIS faculty, PhD students and recipients of PhD degrees, editors of some LIS journals and senior librarians, in international journals.
One of the reasons for low quality of library literature in Pakistan or low visibility of
Pakistani authors on the international library scene is that people do not read professional literature and, therefore, they are not aware of the current trends and emerging concepts in the field. The reason generally given is that they do not have access to library science journals, but now thanks to the Open Access Initiative (OAI),
27 LIS journals are open to everyone without subscription requirements. Some other journals, including College & Research Libraries and Library Resources & Technical
Services have an embargo of six months to three years after which they are also opened for free access (Xia, 2012). Efforts are being made to add more open journals to the list.
Selection of subjects
Table V lists the major subject areas in which Pakistani authors have written articles.
If we relate the data in Table VI with those in Table V, the percentage of faculty contribution is so high that they are associated with almost every other article either as single authors or one of the co-authors. When we group individual articles under broad subjects, we find that there are some areas where faculty contribution is either
100 percent or near about it. For example, subjects like library education, knowledge management, taxonomy, Information literacy and information policy are the ones on which the LIS faculty has written more. On the other hand, cataloging and bibliographic control, collection development, library automation, are the areas where practicing librarians have contributed more articles. The selection of topics is directly related to author types, whether the author is an academic, or a practitioner. There are some authors who try to write articles in the subject areas they have no expertise in.
Therefore, the articles they produce lack quality, substance and do not find a place in ranked journals.
Selection of journals
While analyzing Table VII data, the first thing we may notice is that approximately
42 percent of articles are published in some basic journals (those which are not peer-reviewed and have international coverage) and on the topics which are more suitable for specialized journals, such as library software, library education, reference
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of Pakistani authors 447 services, cataloging and bibliographic control, retrospective conversion, digital libraries and others. One of the reasons for authors not selecting specialized or subject-oriented journals may be the fear of rejection due to their lower rate of acceptance of manuscripts. These rejections may be avoided by following the instructions or guidelines for authors in preparing articles for targeted journals, especially the specialized journals. The submission may have one of the two outcomes
– first, the article may need revision in the light of the reviewers comments or the paper may be rejected because of the reasons generally specified by the editor. In the first case, it is very clear that if you revise your manuscript according to the instructions of the reviewers, there are more chances that the revised manuscript will be accepted. In the second case, you may remove the shortcomings of the paper highlighted by the reviewers and send the revised manuscript to another suitable journal. This will decrease the number of articles published in basic journals and will increase the
Subject No. of articles
Library education 38
Library automation/library software 35
Cataloging and bibliographic control 28
Librarians/information professionals/competencies 24
Knowledge/information management 20
Libraries and librarianship 19
Acquisition/collection development and management 17
Information needs 13
Internet/internet use 12
Information literacy 12
User services and user satisfaction 10
Library management 10
Agricultural information/libraries/research 9
University libraries 9
Digital libraries 8
School libraries 7
Library cooperation/library networks 7
Special libraries 6
Library cooperation/network 6
CD-ROM technology 5
Library resources and services 5
Medical libraries 5
Taxonomy 5
Online catalogs/portals 5
Total 321
Table V.
Subject list of articles
Author type
Number of authors Percentage of authors Number of articles Percentage of articles Faculty 13 18.05 393 71.16
Librarians (all levels) 59 81.94 123 23.83
Total 72 516
Table VI.
Contributions of faculty and librarians
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number of submissions to specialized journals, which are ranked higher than basic journals. Most published authors and their affiliation
Table VIII identifies 16 Pakistani authors who have contributed two or more articles to foreign journals. They have written 443 articles at the rate of 32.25 per author during the period from 1957 to 2011. We have already analyzed the factors behind this huge gap between the outputs of faculty and librarians in Table VI. Of the 16 authors, 13 are
LIS faculty and three are library practitioners. On the other hand, 59 authors who are middle managers and senior librarians have published only 73 articles (including 40 articles by one author). A number of reasons could be attributed to the huge difference in the out puts of two groups of authors. One major reason is that eight faculty members hold PhD degrees from library schools in the USa, UK and Pakistan and they are teaching in reputed library schools in Pakistan, Kuwait and Singapore. For them, research is a requirement for promotion and tenure and they can prepare multiple articles from a single research study. In addition, they have access to several types of
Rank Title ISSN No. of articles
1 Library Review 0024-2535 50
2 Library Philosophy and Practice 1522-0222 38
3 Electronic Library 0264-0473 27
4 Information Development 0266-6669 24
5 Libri 0024-2667 22
6 Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems 0033-0337 19
7 Education for Information 0167-8329 17
8 Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science 1394-6234 13
9 Library Management 0143-5124 10
10 Singapore Journal of Library & Information Science Management 0085-6118 10
11 Journal of Education for Library & Info Science 0748-5786 8
12 Asian Libraries 1017-6748 8
13 Collection Building 0160-4953 8
14 Herald of Library Science 0018-0521 7
15 World Libraries (formerly Third World Libraries) 2155-7896 7
16 Public Library Quarterly 0161-6846 7
17 Aslib Proceedings 0001-253X 7
18 Library Collections, Acquisitions & Technical Services (formerly
Lib Acquistions Practice & Theory 1464-9055 5
19 Unesco Bulletin for Libraries 1947-1948 5
20 New Library World 0307-4803 5
21 Knowledge Organization 0943-7444 5
22 Journal of Academic Librarianship 0099-1333 4
23 Microcomputers for Information Management 0742-2342 4
24 Journal of Knowledge & Information Management 0219-6492 4
25 Library and Information Science Research 0740-8188 4
26 Journal of Documentation 0022-0418 4
27 College & Research Libraries 0010-0870 3
28 Special Libraries 0038-6723 3
Total 338
Table VII.
Journals with three or more articles
Contributions
of Pakistani authors 449
Authorship type
Authors Affiliation Single authored 1st authored 2nd authored 3rd authored Total
1. Mahmood Khalid Faculty (PU) 22 12 32 2 68
2. Majid Shaheen Faculty (NTU) 9 21 21 4 55
3. Rehman Sajjad ur Faculty (KU) 18 21 12 51
4. Haider S Jalaluddin Faculty (UK) 38 1 3 5 47
5. Chaudhry A Sattar Faculty (KU) 10 19 15 3 47
6. Khurshid Zahiruddin Lib Manager (KFUPM) 34 5 1 40
7. Anwar Mumtaz A Faculty (KU/PU) 17 8 6 2 33
8. Ameen Kanwal Faculty (PU) 12 4 13 29
9. Khurshid Anis Faculty (UK) 22 22
10. Shafique Farzana Faculty (PU) 3 7 3 5 18
11. Warraich N Fatima Faculty (PU) 1 9 10
12. Bhatti Rubina Faculty (IUB) 5 2 7
13. Saeed Hamid Research Scholar (NTU) 3 1 4
14. Idrees Haroon Sr Librarian (IIU) 2 2 4
15. Hameed Abdul Librarian (PU) 6 6
16. Qureshi Naimuddin Faculty (UK) 2 2
Total 195 112 115 21 443
Table VIII.
Authors with two or more articles in foreign journals AP
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450 resources, including library resources, funds, equipment, travel opportunities, consultation and human resources (research/graduate assistants). All these resources and facilities give faculty a significant edge over librarians in the publication area.
However, despite a big difference in the environment and conditions of the two groups of authors, librarians can be competitive and can produce equally good literature as is the case with practicing librarians in Europe and North America. Therefore, a lot depends on the motivation, initiatives and hard work of an individual.
Quality of LIS literature published by Pakistani authors in foreign journals
Editors of some LIS journals seem to have become fed up after reviewing a large number of submissions on bibliometric studies for publication in their journals.
Johnson (2011) calls them as “superficial,” “aimless” and most of them have been a waste of the author’s and editor’s time. On the other hand, Ali et al. (1996) find “the unwillingness of some faculty to use a qualitative evaluative process aimed at interpreting the quality of the research and its contribution to the profession, primarily because of group dynamics and social faculty interaction. It is easier to substitute quantitative assessment techniques, because they are less challengeable, and appear to be more objective.” The author also believes that any study of library literature must not concentrate on numbers only, the objective should be to go beyond numbers and come up with the findings which may have impact on research and scholarly communication at the international level. The quality of LIS journal articles has been judged by applying different methods, including the prestige of journals based on the reputation of their editorial board members, their coverage in indexing and abstracting services, perceptions of scholars about journals, citation analysis, and others. But, JCR IF is the method accepted and applied more widely than any other methods.
Impact factor
The Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), the famous publisher of Science Citation
Index, began publishing JCR in 1973 which included 1,000 journals cited most frequently during the period covered by the Reports. They were ranked by impact factor which is “calculated by dividing the number of current citations a journal receives to articles published in the two previous years by the number of articles published in those same years” (Amin and Mabe, 2007). Now JCR is available online and can be retrieved by subject categories, including the one of Information Science
& Library Science. The reports are published annually giving among other information, the impact factor score of each of the journals included in that year’s list.
The 2010 list includes 77 LIS journals.
There are three different opinions about IF as a measuring tool. One group of scholars consider it as a quantitative measure tool because IF scores are given in numbers. The second group considers it a “quasi-qualitative indicator, which provides a measurement of the prestige and international visibility of journals” (Bordons et al.,
2002). Third group believes “it is the chief quantitative measure of the quality of a journal, its research papers, the researchers who wrote those papers and even the institutions they work in” (Amin and Mabe, 2007). Xia (2012) claims that “ISI’s Journal
Citation Reports ( JCR) is among the most used rankings, which offers a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world’s leading journals, with quantifiable,
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of Pakistani authors 451 statistical information based on citation data.” Many universities around the world are using JCR IF for evaluating faculty members for promotions and tenure. Serials librarians use this method for collection development and weeding of journals. As part of user services, American libraries (MU Libraries, 2012) are providing on their
E-journals page links to impact factors from JCR and step-by-step instruction to search for an article in Web of Knowledge using citation’s bibliographic information, and then view the impact factor for the article’s journal. All these statements concur with those who believe that IF is definitely one of the tools for measuring quality of journal articles. JCR has an edge over other tools for its simplicity, easier calculation, long history of use, public acceptance, and the support of publishers like ISI and now
Thomson Reuters.
There are three ways of interpreting data in Table IX.
(1) Rank authors based on the number of articles they published in JCR-ranked journals. According to this criterion, the following five authors top the list:
S. Majid (30 articles); K. Mahmood (22); M.A. Anwar (19); A.S. Chaudhry (18); and Z. Khurshid (16).
(2) If we calculate the same numbers as percentage of the total number of articles published in foreign journals (given in parentheses with each author’s name in
Table IX), the top five authors will be ranked as follows: M.A. Anwar
(52 percent); S. Masjid (42.3 percent); Z. Khurshid (40 percent); A.S. Chaudhry
(38.2 percent); and S. Majid (29 percent). These figures make more sense as the total number of articles published by authors varies significantly.
(3) Compare the lowest and the highest IF scores of journals in Table IX with their corresponding scores of journals in the 2010 JCR list to find out how good they rank as compared to journals in the JCR list. The result shows that while the highest score of a journal in the JCR list is 5.041, the highest score of the journal in which Pakistani authors have published articles is 1.905. It shows low quality of articles published by Pakistani authors. Only four journals scored more than
1 and the rest are ranked less than 1.
The overall picture of the quality of LIS literature that Pakistani authors have published in foreign journals looks gloomy. In terms of numbers, only 29 percent articles are published in JCR-ranked journals. The share of expatriate authors is
65 percent or to put in another way, of the 151 articles 98 have been published by five expatriate authors and 53 articles by 11 resident Pakistani authors. What makes the difference between the two groups of authors is the level and quality of library education and training they received.
Discussion
Until now, all bibliometric studies discussed the quantitative aspects of LIS literature in Pakistan and avoided addressing the quality issues, probably for the reason that it might create ill feelings among fellow librarians. Now with the availability of various methods and tools for judging the quality of journals, including JCR IF, H-index, and
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) in a transparent manner, there is no need to depend on the use of personal judgment to determine the quality of a journal. The present study uses the most popular tool, IF scores to judge the quality of LIS literature in Pakistan. Some people may still not like the results of this study, but they cannot blame the author for
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Author
Ameen,
K.
Anwar,
M.A.
Chaudhry,
A.S.
Haider,
S.J.
Khurshid,
A.
Khurshid,
Z.
Majid,
S.
Mahmood,
K.
Rehman,
S.U.
Shafique,
F.
Warraich,
N.F.
Journal title
JCR IF
(2010) (29) (33) (47) (47) (22) (40) (54) (68) (51) (16) (10)
Scientometrics 1.905 1
Journal of Documentation 1.447 2
Journal of Info Science 1.406 4 5
Library & Information
Science Research 1.362 2 4
Journal of Global
Information Management 1.222 1
Online Information
Review 0.991 1 3 1
Journal of Academic
Librarianship 0.87 2 1 1
Journal of the Medical
Library Association 0.844 1
Health Information and
Libraries Journal 0.761 1
Serials Review 0.707 1
College & Research
Libraries 0.683 1 2
Library Quarterly 0.651 1
Journal of Library
& Information Science 0.636 1 1 3
Aslib Proceedings 0.6 2 2 1
Program: Elec Library
& Information Systems 0.596 4 3 7 2
(continued)
Table IX.
Contributions of
Pakistani authors to
JCR-ranked journals based on IF (2010)
Contributions
of Pakistani authors 453
Author
Ameen,
K.
Anwar,
M.A.
Chaudhry,
A.S.
Haider,
S.J.
Khurshid,
A.
Khurshid,
Z.
Majid,
S.
Mahmood,
K.
Rehman,
S.U.
Shafique,
F.
Warraich,
N.F.
Journal title
JCR IF
(2010) (29) (33) (47) (47) (22) (40) (54) (68) (51) (16) (10)
Library Collections,
Acquisitions & Technical
Services (formerly Library
Acquisitions Practice
& Theory) 0.529 2 2 1
Information Technology
& Libraries 0.528 2
Electronic Library 0.489 5 3 1 2 3 3 2 3
Australian Academic
& Research Libraries 0.457 1 1
Library Hi Tech 0.413 2
Libri 0.365 6 6 4 1 3 3 2
Malaysian Journal of
Library & Information
Science 0.353 5 2 1 8 1 2 1
Library Resources
& Technical Services 0.239 1
Information Development 0.143 1 2 7 1
Total
n 7 19 18 13 4 16 30 22 15 4 3
% 24.13 57.57 38.2 27.6 18 40 55.55 32.35 29.41 2.5 3.3
Table IX.
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using his personal judgment. Instead he applied a standard tool for evaluation, the authenticity of which can be checked and rechecked any number of times.
The results of this study reveal different facets of LIS literature in Pakistan. In terms of numbers, academics are the major contributors among Pakistani authors. On the other hand, library practitioners do not seem to be motivated to publish because they do not get any benefit for research and publications, although academic librarians do have faculty status and they are expected to publish as any other professionals with faculty status do. Looking at the choices made by Pakistani authors on the selection of journals for publishing their articles, one can clearly see that they are not aware of the availability of JCR reports, SCImago Journal Rank, the Ratings of Journals by ARL
Library Directors and LIS Deans, and other methods for judging the quality of LIS journals. A number of them selected basic journals to publish articles on the topics like library education, cataloging practices, library automation and digital marketplace, which are more appropriate for specialized journals, such as Program, Library-Hi Tech,
Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, Journal of Education for Library and
Information Science and most of these journals are included in the JCR list. The other possible reason could be that these specialized journals did not accept manuscripts for publication and the authors were forced to publish them in basic journals. We may note that in pursuit of getting journals included in the JCR list, or to improve the current IF scores of their journals, various LIS journal publishing groups have raised the level of quality requirement for accepting manuscripts. It is now very difficult to get submissions accepted in JCR-ranked journal s in their original form.
Some Journals like Aslib proceedings engage three experts to review manuscripts.
Their comments may take pages, but once we start responding to them one by one, we feel satisfied that how much these comments help authors in enhancing the quality of their papers.
While the number of articles published by Pakistani authors in foreign journals is moderate, their overall quality based on the 2010 IF scores is below average and this is a matter of concern for the library community in Pakistan. Our library schools are not able to prepare librarians to meet the challenges of modern libraries. There is a communication gap between employers and library school administrators. Library schools need to know the requirements for various library jobs in order to prepare graduates accordingly. Among the library schools in Pakistan, the LIS Department of the Punjab University is the leading school whose graduates and post graduate students and faculty are contributing articles to foreign journals regularly, but mostly to non JCR-ranked journals. The other library schools are not making enough efforts toward research and publications. The lack of quality library education in most part of the country is one of the major issues and should be of great concern to all the stakeholders, including heads of library schools, university administration, professional organizations, such as Pakistan Library Association, Society for the
Promotion and Improvement of Libraries (SPIL), if still active, Alumni Associations, and others. They should work together to develop national standards for library education based on which library schools can prepare their curricula. This will bridge the gap between library school programs and the competencies required for entry level positions by the employers. With regard to faculty recruitment or promotion, if the requirement of the position is for a doctoral degree, that degree must be acquired from a recognized and accredited school or program. At present there are so many loop holes
Contributions
of Pakistani authors 455 in the system that anybody can register for a local PhD program, get an advisor from any subject area, prepare the dissertation, submit it and get the degree in a couple of years. After that they become professors and chairmen of LIS departments. This practice adopted by some library schools has destroyed their reputation as a leading institution of library education in Pakistan with majority of its faculty having Master’s and PhD degrees from British and North American library schools. This practice must be stopped and hire or promote only those who have earned their degrees from accredited and recognized library schools in Pakistan or elsewhere in the world.
Resident Pakistani librarians often ignore their colleagues working abroad and the publications they produce outside Pakistan. On the other hand, approximately 48 percent of the articles published in foreign journals are by these Pakistani expatriate librarians. Although this is a very small group, they are highly qualified, skilled and have brought good name to their country. If we exclude them, both the size and the quality of LIS literature in Pakistan will be reduced to half. Any research study on LIS literature produced by Pakistani authors, which does not acknowledge the contributions of expatriate authors may lose its credibility.
Limitations
The present study has some limitations. First it reviews the contributions of Pakistani authors to foreign journals published between 1957 and 2011. In the case of collaborative works by Pakistani and foreign authors, we have only counted Pakistani authors. The exclusion of foreign authors from the list does not have any bearing on the outcome of the study. Local journals are also excluded because the purpose of this study is to see the level of presence of Pakistani authors in international LIS literature and to judge their value based on the JCR IF scores of the journals that published them.
Conference papers, chapters in books, unpublished papers, theses and dissertations, book reviews, news items and technical reports are not included because the CR IF scores are calculated based on citation analysis of journal articles.
Implications
The results of this study are expected to have implications for the following:
. For authors. This study is expected to create awareness among current and potential authors in Pakistan for the fact that many authors do not seem to be aware of the various methods of ranking LIS journals based on JCR IF. After reading the results of this study, many authors will be motivated to publish in foreign journals by improving the quality of their articles to meet the publication requirements of ranked journals.
. For research. Quality of research and research-based articles will go up as authors will start competing with each other for publishing in journals with higher IF scores.
. For library schools. The findings of this study clearly show that whatever contributions Pakistan authors have made to foreign journals, the share of the authors with MLS and PhD degrees from western library schools is much larger.
Also the number of articles published by the teachers and postgraduate students of the Punjab University Library schools is getting bigger every year. The major implications of this study will be for the heads of all other library schools to ask questions about why their faculty and students are not visible in international
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library literature. Even Chinese, Korean and Japanese authors have started publishing in foreign journals in large numbers because of the requirements for promotion and tenure of academics and librarians not only in developed countries but also in many developing countries, including Saudi Arabia.
. For collaboration. Collaboration among library scholars of Asian countries is growing. If a collaborative research is undertaken by authors of several countries having equal knowledge and skills of the field, but gained from different environment, the quality of their research will be higher. Pakistani authors can collaborate with the scholars of other South Asian countries to undertake research studies for preparing quality articles.
. For international seekers of resource persons on Pakistan. In developing countries where the national language is other than English and script is Arabic as in the case of Pakistan, the foreign publishers, editors, authors, and scholars of area studies may be looking for resource persons on Pakistan so that they can contact them for seeking contributions on Pakistan Librarianship for new encyclopedias and handbooks, or updating the old ones. In the past, one of the most published authors reported in this study, Anis Khurshid, through his writing in foreign journals, and books became the most sought after resource person on LIS in Pakistan until his death in 2008. He used to be consulted regularly by ALA, IFLA, Editors of DDC, British Council, Library of Congress,
Unesco, and other international organizations and institutions on issues related to library and information services, library education, bibliographic control, library training in Pakistan. He was on the editorial boards of at least three to four LIS journals and a regular contributor to Encyclopedia of Library and
Information Science (Marcel Dekker) and World Encyclopedia of Library and
Information Services (ALA), encyclopedias, wrote chapters in several monographs, such as International Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Librarianship (Greenwood Press), Resource Sharing of Libraries in Developing
Countries (K.G. Saur) and others, and published more than 20 articles in foreign
LIS journals. The present study identifies some scholars who have knowledge of the field, huge experience as academics as well as library administrators, have published widely both in local and foreign LIS journals and qualify to become resource persons on Pakistan. The present study can help them find his successor. . For developing countries. LIS literature is full of articles dealing with the problems and difficulties in managing libraries of so many developing countries, including Pakistan. Even Saudi Arabia with the yearly income of billions of dollars from oil exports have not been able to improve the standard of library education, develop skills of librarians or enhance quality of LIS literature. So, all developing countries have the same problems of the lack of skilled manpower and quality of library services. Following the present study model, other developing countries can also undertake similar studies to judge the quality of their LIS literature based on JCR IF and to identify those authors who have produced them. This way an elite group of authors can be created in each country who can do a lot of collaborative research projects on common problems
Contributions
of Pakistani authors 457 and issues related to library and information services in their respective countries. Conclusion and further research
The author calls this an evaluative study because it is not just about numbers, it is about providing another important dimension of evaluating the LIS literature based on impact factor – a generally accepted and well established method to rank the quality of journal articles. The low number of articles published by Pakistani authors in
JCR-ranked journals (151 or 29 percent) shows that they lack knowledge of the availability and use of various methods of ranking of journal articles, particularly the
JCR IF. One gets the impression that Pakistani institutions of higher education do not use the IF score as one of the requirements for faculty promotion and tenure as several universities in Saudi Arabia do. However, whether it is required for any purpose or not, the authors should be more than willing to measure the quality of journals in which they publish articles.
In addition to Web of Knowledge and the Journal Citation Reports, Google Scholar is a new source for citation analysis. The rule of thumb suggested by Harzing and van der Wal (2008) say “if an academic shows good citation metrics, i.e. if his or her work is well-cited, it is very likely that he or she has made a significant impact on the field. If an academic shows weak citation metrics, this may be caused by a lack of impact on the field.” Unfortunately, the library literature in Pakistan has not been reviewed from this angle. When the author searched Google Scholar to find out the highest number of times an article by a Pakistani author’s has been cited by others, it was 33 on August 1,
2012. On the other hand, the number of times an article by Carol Tenopir, an American scholar is cited was 400 plus. This shows the huge gap between the quality of an articles written by a Pakistani author and a Western author. This gap needs to be narrowed down by being innovative and creative in our professional writings. We have to be realistic and objective in categorizing our own articles as “research-based” and those of others as “descriptive,” because the value of any article is judged on the impact factor of the journal in which it is published and not on the perception of an individual.
Another important thing to note is that it is not enough to say that if a journal is indexed in LISA, LISTA or any other indexing and abstracting services, it indicates the quality of the journal. It is the number of times an article from that journal is cited determines the quality of the article and of the journal that published it. All known scholars in any field select articles from quality journals with higher IF scores for literature review and since LIS journals from developing countries have lower or no impact at all, they avoid selecting articles from them even if they are relevant to the topic. Results of this study will be a revelation for most Pakistani authors. The author is pleased to have done this study with one of its objectives to educate fellow Pakistani authors about the various tools available for measuring the quality of Journal articles, particularly the JCR IF and to motivate them to publish more in JCR-ranked-journals.
The present study has opened up opportunities for academics and working librarians to do further research on the topics of ranking of LIS journals using some other methods, such as SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), Eigenfactor, H-index or a combination of one or more methods and compare the results with IF scores to find out which is more accurate and reliable method.
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Karachi, available at: www.angelfire.com/ma3/mahmoodkhalid/index.html (accessed
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Corresponding author:
Zahiruddin Khurshid can be contacted at: [e-mail]
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Citations: years. Of the 219 articles published in the years, 2006-2011, their contribution is about 60 percent, which is highly remarkable (1996) have referred to the 1963 prediction of Derek J. De Solla Price saying that “by 1980 the single author paper will be extinct”, and that scientific collaboration would