Application of Bradford’s Law of Scattering to the Solar Physics World Literature:A Scientometric Study

Bradford’s law of scattering is one of the fundamental laws of bibliometric study, describes a quantitative relationship between journals and the papers they publish in any given subject field. This paper deals with the applicability of Bradford law of scattering, study include 80 journals publishing 1,28,003 articles, in the world solar physics literature published during 1991-2015. Ranked list of journals prepared, Astrophysical journal alone publish with 25% of the articles in solar physics field, followed by Astronomy and Astrophysics with 20% articles. The applicability of Bradford’s law was tested. The journal distribution pattern of the solar physics literature does not fit the Bradford’s distribution pattern. The applicability of Egghe’s model (modification of Leimkuhler’s model) was also tested and here also the dataset does not fit the Bradford’s distribution pattern.