Bradford’s zones and productivity of journals in psychology doctoral theses

Abstract

Bradford’s law of scattering is based on the principle that every scientific field is related, however remotely, to everyother field. One hundred and forty one Ph.D. theses accepted in the field of psychology for the award of doctoral degreeswere analysed to identify the Bradford’s zones and productivity of journals cited in the theses. The productivity of citedjournals is measured after dividing the journals into four equal groups. The average rate of productivity of journals in thefirst group is 254 articles, whereas it has considerably gone down to 10.73 articles in the fourth group. The journaldistribution as per the Bradford’s law reveals the ratio as 17:46:358 in psychology, dispersion of journal titles in psychologydoes not satisfy the Bradford’s Law of Scattering.