Open Source Software (OSS): A Scientometric Study of Global Publications during 1999-18

Abstract

The paper examines 341 global publications on “Open Source Software” research, as seen from Web of Science bibliographical database during 1999-18. The study uses various bibliometric indicators, such as growth rate, citation impact, share of international collaborative papers, subject distribution etc to explore research in this area. The OSS research registered 23.12% growth and registered average citation impact per paper of 7.54 citations. The global share of top 10 most productive countries in OSS research ranged from 2.05% to 32.55%. USA contributed the largest global share (32.55%), followed by India (10.26%), England (7.62%), China (5.87%), Spain (5.28%), Canada (3.81%) etc. Six countries scored relative citation index above the world average of 1.0: Australia (1.81), England (1.55), China and Spain (1.39 each), USA (1.117) and Canada (1.08) during 1999-18. The share of international collaborative publications of top 10 most productive countries in OSS research varied from 2.86% to 87.50%. Information Science Library Science (100%), accounted for the highest publication share among broad subjects, followed by Computer Science Information Systems (30.79%), management (10.26%), communication (3.52%) etc. during 1999-18. The top 15 most productive organisations and authors contributing to OSS research accounted for 19.35% and 12.02% global publication share and 18.9% and 11.66% global citation share, respectively. The top 15 most productive journals accounted for 61% global share of journal publication output during 1999-18.