The Seventeenth International Conference on Books, Publishing & Libraries

Abstract

The Maldives, as a small island developing state, embarked on fostering a research culture only within the last few years. This paper presents a bibliometric and scientometric analysis of this early phase of Maldives’ research and publication trajectory based on the output of the Maldives National Journal of Research (MNJR), which is an open-access multi-disciplinary journal and is the first continuing academic publication in the country. Google Scholar citation analysis was utilized for the scientometric analysis. A total of 34 documents has been published in the MNJR from 2013 to date, with 68% of the documents categorized as research articles/reports. The documents were authored by 37 individuals, with 5 of them contributing 2 articles each. During the first 3 years, all contributions were single-authored articles by local researchers, with a significant proportion of collaborative articles in recent years from local as well as overseas researchers. The bibliographic investigation shows that the Relative Citation Impact for the six years ranged from 0 (2016) at the lowest to 2.55 (2014) at the highest, with the Impact Factor at 0 for all years. The h-index for MNJR is 1 and signifies a low research performance. While the data might appear dismal, the findings highlight comparatively positive citations for a new journal even when it has not been indexed. The findings also highlight the potential for MNJR as a scholarly publication; which can be achieved by increasing the number of papers and enhancing online access and proper indexing for efficient retrieval.