Monday, May 27, 2013

Current Science & Scientometrics articles by Prabir G. Dastidar

Contribution of shrimp disease research to the development of the shrimp aquaculture industry: an analysis of the research and innovation structure across the countries
by Prabir G. Dastidar, Ajoy Mallik and Nripendranath Mandal
Scientometrics (2013), doi: 0.1007/s11192-013-0977-9 . First published online: 27 February 2013

Abstract
Shrimp aquaculture constitutes a major economic activity of some middle- and low-level economies in the world. Though it is practiced by around 70 countries, it is primarily dominated by China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Ecuador and India. These six countries account for 80 % of the global shrimp production. The study has highlighted the role of research in the development of the industry by taking the examples of Penaeus vannamei and P. monodon. In case of the former, a seven time rise in quantum of research (studied by the number of publications as a proxy) could induce five time increase in production, whereas, in the latter case similar pattern was not noticed. The study has observed that based on shrimp production and research contribution; the major 30 countries associated with shrimp aquaculture could be categorized as: (i) high production, high-research contribution, (ii) low production, high-research contribution and (iii) high production, low-research contribution. The countries under the third category are at great risk and may suffer huge economic losses in the event of outbreak of any disease. By generating network map of research linkage across different countries the study has highlighted the potential countries for strengthening the existing linkage and fostering new linkage for knowledge consolidation. The study has given some suggestion for policy formulation for achieving a rapid growth of shrimp aquaculture in the world.

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Citation analysis to reconstruct the dynamics of Antarctic ozone hole research and formulation of the Montreal Protocol 
Olle Persson and Prabir G. Dastidar
Current Science, 10 April 2013, 104(07): 835-840.


Abstract
The ozone layer acts like a shield in safeguarding the Earth by preventing the harmful ultraviolet radiations from entering into the atmosphere. Reported damage to the ozone layer in 1985 was a significant milestone in Antarctic science research. The research work played a significant role in generating international socio-political debate on this great environmental crisis. This article aims to reconstruct the intellectual developments in the field and identify important scientific events which contributed to the formulation of the world's most successful multilateral treaty, the Montreal Protocol. The dynamics of the research field was mapped using a newly developed indicator–weighted direct citations (WDC). The WDC value indicates intellectual closeness between two citations in terms of co-citations and shared references. Direct citations were weighted with shared references and co-citations to derive WDC values. An attempt was made to decompose the citation network of articles to identify significant activity layers. The work of J.C. Farman et al. (1985) and S. Solomon (1986), which are the top two most cited significant papers in the subject accounts for top WDC values jointly.

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