Research Values of Books and Journals among Indian Library and Information Science Journals

An analysis of the references (9182) appeared in different journals of Library and information science in India during 1975 to 1985 reveals that books and journals are the two major sources for citations. It was observed that articles of recent origin published in journals were comparatively referred more. But references to books are made even when they are old. Regarding the number of books and journal references, during earlier times, it is observed that books were cited heavily but in recent years more citations were being made from journals. Further, the top ranked journals received more percentage of citations than the books of the same rank. In case of books, only classics have some research potency. It is concluded, therefore, that in library and information science researches in India, research value of journals are comparatively becoming higher than of books.