Zoological Research Contributions of the University of Burdwan in West Bengal: an Analytical Study

Research productivity in Zoology, authorship pattern and nature of collaboration among the zoology scholars are studied by analyzing 236 theses and 719 thesis articles submitted by the scholars of the Zoology Department at the University of Burdwan in eleven subdivisions of Zoology during 1960-2000. The highest number of thesis submission was 64 and the highest number of article submission was 251 during the same time span 1986-1990. The highest number of theses (65) was submitted in Entomology followed by Parasitology (51), Fishery (29) and Cytology (28) respectively. The highest (48) number of theses were guided by Deb Kumar Chaudhuri. Authorship trend is towards multiauthored papers. The degree of collaboration is 0.51. The most prolific author was P.K. Choudhuri who topped the list with 80 papers during the period 1960-2000 followed by D.K. Choudhuri with 49 publications, S. Chakraborty with 49 publications, S.K. Ghosal with 45 publications, G. Majumdar with 44 publications and S.K Moitra with 44 publications. Among the top ranking journals publishing the papers are from India with 440 (61.18%) publications followed by Germany with 55(7.64%) publications, Netherlands with 45(6.25%) publications, USA with 40(5.56%) publications, China with 25(3.47%) publications and UK with 24(3.38 %) publications. Among the six state Universities of West Bengal, Burdwan University has produced highest numbers (719) of articles followed by Calcutta University with 452 articles, Kalyani University with 316 articles and North Bengal University with 77 Zoology articles during the period 1960-2000.