Abstract:
Bibliometrics offers a powerful set of methods
and measures for studying the structure and
process of scholarly communication. By
employing bibliometric approach, this paper
examines the characteristics of the abstracts
published in the Proceedings of the Jaffna
Science Association (JSA), covering a 25-year
period. Bibliographical details of 893 abstracts
available in 24 volumes of the JSA proceedings
were collected, tabulated, analyzed and
reported. The attributes such as, distribution of
abstracts, authorship pattern, institutional
contribution, medium of language, subject
coverage, and format of the abstracts were
taken into consideration for the bibliometric
analysis. Results showed that there is variation
in the number of abstracts published per year,
ranging from 17 to 74. Besides, 72.79% of the
published abstracts belonged to pure and
applied sciences. Collaborative authorship is a
prominent feature observed in 81.52% of the
abstracts, which is the current trend in
scholarly communication. Among the
contributing institutions, University of Jaffna is
at the forefront. Analysis of subject coverage
revealed that 62.71% of the abstracts related
to the disciplines namely agriculture, biology
and biochemistry. In view of enhancing the
accessibility, majority of the authors selected
English as a channel for their scholarly
communication. Furthermore, it was found that 78.72% of the abstracts comply with the
guidelines for the abstract layout, prescribed
by the JSA. Regarding the length of abstracts,
44.46% fall within the acceptable range of 200-
299 words. This bibliometric study of scholarly
communication provided a comprehensive
view of the dynamical growth of knowledge of
the region.
