SCIENTOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF ASTROPHYSICS RESEARCH OUTPUT IN INDIA

Astrophysics is a branch of space science that applies the laws of physics and chemistry to explain the birth, life and death of stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae and other objects in the universe. Astrophysics creates physical theories of small to medium-size structures in the universe. Astrophysicists seek to understand the universe and our place in it. At NASA, the goals of astrophysics are "to discover how the universe work, explore how it began and evolved, and search for life on planets around other stars." This study analyzes the Astrophysics research output in India from the year 1989-2014. The data was downloaded from web of science database which was maintained by Thomson Reuters. The findings of the study revealed that two authors has the maximum of contribution with 3673 (28.81%) publication followed by three authors with 2875 (22.55%).


INTRODUCTION
Scientometric study is a statistical method of counting to evaluate and quantify the growth of a subject. The research trend during the said time span would be clearly understood from this study and a predictive projection may be made for anticipatable future. There are several areas in science, social science and arts for which scientometric studies were carried out. A number of studies have been accomplished to evaluate research output and productivity in different areas of physics. In 2009, Kumara (2009) carried out scientometric studies in major areas of physics and engineering sciences. Some other scientometric studies in different subject domains include Jain and Garg (1992) Kademani (2006) (Thorium research), Stanhill (2001) (climatology), Garg and Padhi (1998) (Laser patent literature), Upadhye (2004) (physics Noble lectures), Lee (2003) (molecular and cell biology), Schummer (1997) (chemistry), Braun et al. (2000) and Gupta (1999) A number of scientometric studies in the areas of astronomy and astrophysics have also been executed. Basu and Lewison (2005) evaluated research output of global astronomy and astrophysics by an analysis of papers in the Science Citation Index identified with a special filter and found out leading Indian institutions and authors. Jamali and Nicholas (2010) attempted scientometric analysis from a new angle. The results presented by him revealed interdisciplinary differences within physics and astronomy in terms of reading behaviour. Leta (2005) executed a comparative analysis of Brazilian research trend in astronomy, immunology and oceanography. Davoust and Schmadel (1969) studied publishing activities of the astronomers since 1969. Fernández (1998) studied transitional steps from individual science to collectivization in astronomy during twentieth century. Uzun and Ozel (1996) studied publication pattern of Turkish astronomers. Marx and Bornmann (2009) showed the transition from the static view of the universe to the big bang theory in cosmology through citation analysis. Sen (2004) discussed definition and scope of scientometrics for all major science subjects in the context of web resources (cybermetrics).

Objectives
 To analyze the year wise publication of Astrophysics research output in India.
 To analyze the Half period comparison.
 To find out the Authorship pattern.
 To determine the Document wise distribution of publication.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The data for the study were retrieved from web of science database which is a scientific and indexing service maintained by Thomson Reuters. The Astrophysics research output of India was analyzed. The bibliographic details such as Astrophysics research ouput,authors, document types etc. were analyzed using Histcite which is a software package used for bibliometric analysis and information visualization.

ANALYSIS
A total of 12750 astro physics records were published in India. The research output was analyzed using various scientometric indicators.  The above table indicates authorship pattern of Astrophysics research output by India from the period 1989-2014.It is clearly noticed from the table that two authors has the maximum of contribution with 3673 (28.81%) publication. It is also noted that out of 12750 publications only 58(0.45%) publications are contributed by ten authors. The above table provides the distribution of publication on Astrophysics research by document types. It is clearly noticed from the table that the major source of publication in Astrophysics research comes in the form of articles with 11389 records, followed by proceedings paper and letter 760 and 193 publications respectively.

CONCLUSION
The Astrophysics research output in India as evidenced from the study has the highest publication of 913 papers in 2013 with 4342 Global Citation Scores followed by 896 papers in 2014 with 3287 Global Citation Score and 885 papers in 2012 with 6902 Global Citation Scores. The study shows that in the second half period average number of records is 631 with average Global Citation Score 8741 .It reveals that second half period (55%) increase in average number of publications compare to the first half period. The majority of the articles are contributed by multiple authors. Especially Two authors' contribution is the highest among the other collaborative productivity. It indicates that the single authored work is less than that of the multiple authored contributions.