A Bibliometric Study of World Research Output on Free and Open Source Software Literature during 1960-2016

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Dr Preet Kanwal

Abstract

Bibliometrics play a prominent role in the domain of research evaluation to measure the literature output on any given subject. Bibliometric techniques are used for quantitative analysis of scientific publications based on various parameters like publication counts, authors, types of publications and the citations therein to measure the research outputs of individuals/research teams, institutions, and countries, and to map the development of new disciplines. Similar approach has been adopted in this paper to identify the global literature output on ‘Free and Open Source Software’ literature based on the research data retrieved from ‘Scopus’ database source. The study attempts to identify the bibliometric characteristics of the research publications from Scopus database during the period 1960-2016. Bibliometric techniques have been used to analyse the data which has been classified by using spreadsheet software. The results show that the total publication output is 165,751 of which the articles 106108 (64%) are the most prominent publications, most prolific author is A. E. Hassan with 113 publications. The subject area with highest research output is of Medicine (31.72%). ‘Plos One’ is the highly productive journal with 34354 (20.73%) publications contributing one-fifth of total publications. The most productive institution is University of Washington, Seattle which produced 900 publications. United States tops the list of countries with publication output being 47058 (28.39%) publications.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; Free software; Open Source Software; FOSS

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