Bibliometric is the application of mathematical and statistical methods to publications. It is often used to assess scientific research through quantitative studies on research publications. Bibliometric assessments are based on the assumption that most scientific discoveries and research results are eventually published in international scientific journals where they can be read and cited by other researchers. The number of citations to a journal article can be considered to reflect the article’s impact on the scientific community. Applied bibliometrics, as it is used today, analyzes the number of scientific articles published by a select number of authors, citations to these articles and connections between articles, authors and subjects.

It is an peer-reviewed journal aiming to promote and enhance research in all fields of tourism, including travel, hospitality and leisure. it is international journal. It published on an average of 28 articles per annum.

The present study aims to evaluate the scholarly publication trends of TOURISMOS from 2006 to 2011 with the application of bibliometric indicators [1-7]. The key objectives of the study are as follows:

• To study the pattern of article distribution and citations by year during the period 2006-2011.

• To find out the authors’ degree of collaboration;

• To find out the distribution of contributing authors by country;

• To determine the age of journal citations and the half-life of articles; and

• To present the ranking of journals on the basis of citation.

In general most of the journals publish even number of papers in each and every issue. Table 1 portrays about the number of papers published by journal year wise.

Table 1: Number of articles year wise.

It is evident that the total number of 169 contributions during the period 2006-2011 have been recorded for the journal. Table 1 shows the details of the articles in the issues form the year 2006-2011. The number of articles published in 2009 was the maximum 52 articles. The minimum number of articles were published in 2006 only 12 articles. The journal publishes on an average of 28 articles per year.

Authorship pattern

Table 2 showed that out of 169 articles single authors contributed 59 while the rest 110 articles were contributed by joint authors. The joint authors publication is occupied first position followed by Single authors. Further the overall author contribution is higher during the year 2009 (52 authors) followed by the year 2011 (43 authors) and the lowest contribution during 2006 (12 authors).

Table 2: Authorship pattern year wise.

Degree of collaboration

Various methods have been the degree methods proposed to calculate the degree of research collaboration. Here in this study the formula proposed by Subramanyam has been used.

The degree of collaboration C=Nm/(Nm+Ns)

Where C=Degree of collaboration in a discipline

Nm=number of multi authored papers in the discipline

Ns=number of single papers in the discipline

Hear Nm=110

Ns=59

C=0.65

Thus the degree of collaboration (C) during the overall 6 years (2006-2011) is 0.65. But when we calculate the year wise degree of collaboration for 6 years the results arise different.

Table 3 represents the year wise number of multi-authored articles and their degree of collaboration. In the study, the degree of collaboration of all years is almost same of the mean value as 0.59. Table shows that in the 6 years of period the multi authorship articles are higher and predominant than single authorship. The multi authored articles 40 are highest in the year 2009.

Table 3: Year wise degree of collaboration.

Length of articles

Table 4 reveals that the majority of articles 88 have the length of 15 & above pages followed by 41 articles with 11-15 pages, 20 articles with 6-10 pages and the remaining 20 articles have the length of below 5 pages.

Table 4: Length of articles.

Institution wise contribution

Table 5 envisage the institution wise contributors. These sectors have been grouped into five distinct Categories for the convenience of the study. The highest contributions were from universities with 142. This is followed by research institutions with 16, Colleges 8 and organizations 3.

Table 5: Institution wise contribution.

Distribution of authors by country

Table 6 shows a list of all countries from where contributions were originated. The top five countries were Greece, Italy, Turkey, USA and Egypt. Not surprisingly, nearly 21 percentage of contributions were from the journal’s home country of Greece. However, the journal has scholarly contents from authors in different parts of the world. Most significantly, it has a fairly wide author distribution in 49 countries.

Table 6: Country-wise Distribution of Articles.

Ranking of authors by number of publications

A total number of 315 authors contributed to 169 articles published in Tourismos during 2006 to 2011. The ranking of most prolific authors in according to their number of contributions to Tourismos is showed below (Table 7). It is found that Juan Gabriel Brida has contributed a maximum number of 6 articles, followed by Juan S. Pereyra, Maximiliano E. Korstanje (2 articles). Furthermore, 21 authors contributed two articles each and 269 authors one article each.

Table 7: Major contributors, their affiliations and contributions during 2006-2011.

Special issues

Table 8 shows the details of special/thematic issues of Tourismos brought out during 2006-2011 under the Guest Editorship of eminent professionals both from academia as well as research and development organisations/institutions. Out of 15 issues published during 2006- 2011, only three (6.10 per cent) special issues were brought out in 2009 and 2011, respectively. There were no special issues during 2006-2008 and 2009. The First two Special issues under the Guest Editorship of eminent Professor Olga Iakovidou and followed Issue by Serena Volo, Linda Osti and Oswin Maurer from Italy.

Table 8: Special Issues for TOURIMOS during 2006-2011.

The present study is related to Bibliometrics analysis of articles published in TOURISMOS for the period from 2006-2011. The period from 2006-2011 was selected as a choice. Any consecutive set of 4 years can be selected. The study has analysed various aspects such as authorship Pattern, degree of collaboration among the authors and geographical distribution of papers. The year-wise distribution of articles TOURISMOS shows that the highest number 52 total output 169 in 2009. Maximum number of articles is 12 have been contributed by Single authors from 2009 to 2011. This shows that single author research work were constant in the contribution made to TOURISMOS. This has been further testified with the degree of collaboration. The degree of collaboration in TOURISMOS is 0.65 which clearly contribution. The Geographical distribution of papers highlights that the journal is dominated by the host country (ie Greece) as most of the articles are contributed by the professionals from Greece.

Out of 169 articles single authors contributed 59 while the rest 110 articles were contributed by joint authors. The joint authors publication is occupied first position followed by Single authors. Multi authorship articles are higher and predominant than single authorship. The multi authored articles 40 are highest in the year 2009. Majority of articles have the length of 15 pages. The top five countries were Greece, Italy, Turkey, USA and Egypt. 21 authors contributed two articles each and 269 authors one article each. TOURISMOS is materialized with 3 special issues during the 2006-2011.