Lotka’s Law and Bioinformatics Research in India

Abstract

The study aims to examine the validity of Lotka’s law and authorship distribution to the research outcome of Indian bioinformatics research output indexed in the web of science during 2008-2017. This study has applied Lotka’s law to assess authors’ productivity pattern of bioinformatics literature and further Chi- square test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) goodness- of-fit test applied for testing of observed and expected author productivity data. A total of 8732 papers has been scattered in 1723 journals during the period were compiled from web of science database. Using ‘straight count’ of authors, a total of 3835 authors were identified and the Lotka’s law was tested using K- S goodness- of - fit test and Chi- square test. The results indicate that the author productivity distribution of Lotka’s law is applicable to bioinformatics literature, while applying K- S test and not applicable when the Chi- square test is employed. This study is significant, as there have been no such studies conducted in the area of Indian bioinformatics research output and it will definitely set a baseline for future studies on author productivity of bioinformatics research output.