Application of mixed metrics of bibliometric analysis on the journal of the University Librarians’ Association of Sri Lanka (2005 to 2019): with special reference to VOS viewer visualization

This study, using mixed methods of bibliometric analysis, aims to cover the articles published in the Journal of the University Librarians’ Association (JULA) of Sri Lanka from 2005 to 2019. Primary goal of the study is to holistically analyze the journal in terms of important bibliometric aspects in light of improving LIS research on open access platforms. Analyses were executed to illustrate authorship impact, citation patterns, subject coverage, and visualization of citations’ connections, co-authorship, and co-occurrence network. Among 127 articles authored by 182 librarians/library professionals analyses were performed to find the influential contributors, degree of collaboration, currency of citation, core journals, most preferred topics of research, and outstanding institutions. Single authorship constitutes the majority of the total contribution (62.5%) nevertheless the degree of collaboration steadily increased over time (0.37). Study findings also conform to the application of Lotka’s law of author productivity. University of Peradeniya ranks first among outstanding universities that contributed more to the JULA. Application of Bradford’s law identified core journals used by the contributors. Authors of this article employed MS Excel and SPSS for carrying out the analyses. They also experimented using VOS viewer for finding the co-occurrence of LIS subjects. Finally, the study intends to find out the areas of improvements needed in library science research in Sri Lanka. And, the authors shed their opinions on improving the existing open access journals in light of installing altmetric tools.