Bibliometric analysis of AIDS literature

In accordance with high incidence of AIDS cases, there is an epidemic growth of its literature. This unprecedented growth of literature calls for serious scientometric study. Such a study will not only help the scientometrists, information scientists, but also will be very useful to the related research workers. With this in view an attempt has been made to analyse AIDS literature published during the period 1976–1986 to identify its international channel of communication, medium of communication, contributing countries, authorship trends etc. This study is based on data printed in a source document entitledCollected Papers on AIDS Research, 1976–1986 published by BIOSIS which is a retrospective bibliography incorporating valuable references to research on AIDS from 9,000 source titles monitored in BIOSIS data base. The findings of this study have also been compared to those ofWyatt andSelf, Filardo andLancaster.Dedicated to the memory of Michael J. Moravcsik