attached
Every scientist, research Institute and all research publications are connected to one another
by means of affiliations, co-authorships and citations. The objective of the present study was
to visualize linkages among researchers and institutes in environment related publications in
Sri Lanka, aiming to identify special patterns and trends. This Webometric and Bibliometric
study had three main sections: co-citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, and hyperlink
analysis. In addition, an author keyword analysis and a co-citation analysis was conducted to
identify different areas within the environmental science field and their relative popularity.
The analysis was conducted using data gathered from the abstract and citation database
“Scopus”, which were published during the 10-year time period from 2006 to
2015.VOSviever was used to generate maps. Gathered data revealed that a total of 10,367
authors were involved in environment related publications. It has been observed that even
though the study was conducted using Sri Lankan publications, collaboration between foreign
and domestic scientists was higher than Sri Lankan scientists themselves. From subject related
linkages within environment related publications, the study revealed 24 different subject areas
of interest among scientists based on author keyword analysis and co-citation analysis. Out of
that 13.3% and 11.9% of the publications are related to ‘Ecology’ and ‘Agriculture’
respectively. It was found that 45 institutes were involved in environment related publications.
Analysis revealed that 42.0% of total citation links (Citation Analysis) and 30.9% of total coauthorship links (Co-authorship Analysis) belong to the University of Peradeniya. Citation
analysis of authors revealed 3,116 authors (30.1%) with at least one citation link, and 7,251
(69.9%) authors with zero citation links. Highest (10.1%) non-domestic citation links were
with United States scientists. Followed by India (6.5%) and Australia (6.3%).Hyperlink
analysis revealed a low connectivity between institute web domains with only 11 out of 45
domains that contain more than 10 outgoing ‘url citations’ to one another. It was evident that
the research output in subject areas such as Wildlife Management, Climate Change and Waste
Management are much lower in comparison. These institutes and researchers need to keep a
much higher web activity and connectivity in order to obtain a better online visibility.
