Publication and citation patterns in the literature of liquid crystals with special reference to the contribution of India,Canada, Japan,United Kingdom and the Soviet Union

From an analysis of bibliographic data on 430 journal articles on liquid crystals covered inPhysics Abstracts 1976 and the 4729 citations to them up to the end of 1987, we have identified the geographic origin, the prominent institutions, language and journal-wise distribution of the papers, the citedness of these papers, and the distribution of citations as a time series for the highly cited papers. We have also analysed the 126 papers published by authors from India, Canada, Australia, Israel, Japan and the United Kingdom and covered inPhysics Abstracts 1978, and the 1154 citations to them up to 1987. Unlike in most other high tech areas of physics, in LC research the difference in performance between the USA and the other leading countries is not very pronounced. Publication data from 1976, 1978 and 1985 reveal that LC literature is on the rise and that the percentage share of the Soviet Union is rising fast and that of the USA is on the decline.Dedicated to the memory of Michael J. Moravcsik