Botanical Survey of India (1971-2010): a Scientometric Analysis

The present study reports on the research performance of the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) between 1971 and 2010, based on number of parameters, including publications, citations, impact in terms of average citation per paper, international and national collaboration output, share of publication by different circles of BSI, type of communication, most preferred journals, highly cited papers, authorship pattern and most productive authors. The study analyses 40 years (1971-2010) of publication data drawn from Web of Science (SCI-Expanded). A total of 423 papers were published in 40 years (10.57 papers per year), which received 892 citations with an average of 2.1 citations per paper, h-index of 12 and a p-index of 12.34. It has been observed that during 1977-1986, number of publications was comparatively better. Between 1987 and 2005, a long recession was observed; again it is on rise from 2006 onwards, the citations were following almost the same trend. BSI has published 72 and 38 collaborative papers with involvement of 56 national and 22 foreign institutions respectively. Current Science is the most preferred journal, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research is major domestic collaborator (21 papers), University of Rhode Island, Kingston is the major foreign collaborator (11 papers), USA is the major collaborator country (16 papers) and BSI, Kolkata has contributed maximum number of publications (41%).