Article Title: Application of Bradford’s Law on Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research
Author(s): Nazia Wahid and Haroon Idrees
Institute(s): Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi; Department of Library and Information Science, University of Sargodha.
Journal: Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research, 2017, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1-17
Correspondence Address: Nazia Wahid Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. E-mail: naziasiff@gmail.com
Abstract
Bradford’s Law states that articles on a given subject are distributed over journals according to specific mathematical function, where a large number of articles are scattered in fewer highly productive journals. The purpose of this study was to apply the accepted formulations of Bradford’s Law to citations used by the authors of the Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research to find out the list of core journals cited. Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research has been published since 1986 by National Institute of Psychology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. This study examined 251 articles published in the Journal from 1986 to 2012. The data consisted of 6890 citations used by the authors. A ranked list of the cited journals was formed for the application of Egghe’s formulation of Bradford’s Law of scattering. Findings showed that journals were the most preferred source for citations in this study. Most of the cited journals were published in the United States. The rate of authors’ and journals’ self-citations was very low. A ranked list of the journals was prepared and Journal of Applied Psychology was found to be the most cited journal. The study identified 24 core journals after the application of Bradford’s Law. Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research is the only journal of Pakistan found in the list of core journals. This law was found fit to the citations of the Journal.
Keyword. Bradford’s law, citation analysis, Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research
