Channels of Scholarly Communications of Plant Pathology Literature:An Evaluation

Traces the history and growth of plant pathology literature and measures the dimensions of its systematic development in India. Presents an analysis of 3685 citations collected frm 20 Ph.D. theses (1980-1993) submitted to the Department of Plant Pathology at Rajendra Agricultural University, Bihar (India). The analysis reveals that, the main channels of infomation are scattered in 631 periodicals, of which a total of 2207 citations(73.01%) are covered by first 100 periodicals and the remaining 816 citations (26.99%) by the rest 531 periodicals. Further analysis shows that, 3023 (i.e., 82.04%) citations are covered by periodical publications (primary journals 80.9% + non-primary journals 1.05%) and only 17.96% (i.e., 662) by non-periodical publications. The rank list of periodicals indicated that 50.31 % significant literature is covered by the first 20 periodicals and the rest by 611 periodicals.