[LIS-Forum] Congrats to Dr. Bidyarthi Dutta for Your PhD Award

[Puna Das]

Dear Friends,
 
I am pleased to inform you that Mr. Bidyarthi Dutta (Librarian, St. Xavier's College, Kolkata) has successfully completed his doctoral degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata and received his PhD degree from Hon'ble Governor Shri Gopal Krishna Gandhi.
 
Congrats to Dr. Bidyarthi Dutta for your substantial contributions to the LIS literature, particularly for your insightful articulation on the Growth of Subject. 

His Thesis details are appended below:
 
TITLE
An Analytical Investigation into the Characteristics of a Subject: A Case Study 
 
SUPERVISORS
Dr. Krishnapada Majumder and Professor B.K. Sen
 
ABSTRACT
This study aims to investigate the characteristics of a subject by analyzing keywords collected from various journal articles pertaining to the said subject. The subject chosen for this study is 'Fermi liquid', which is a specific subject under the broad subject 'Condensed matter physics'. In all, 17945 keywords have been collected from the titles and abstracts of 6371 journal articles devoted to the subject Fermi liquid over a time span of 20 years (1985-2004). The titles and abstracts of 6371 journal articles have been collected from the bibliographic database of INSPEC and COMPENDEX. After collecting all the keywords were arranged alphabetically, and then broken in three kernels, viz. keyphrase, modulator and qualifier. The keyphrase articulates the core concept lying behind the entire keyword. The keyphrase is the nucleus of the keyword. The modulator limits the scope and coverage of the core concept, while the qualifier points out a particular state
 of the 'Modulated' core concept. Each keyword has been rewritten in this sequence, keyphrase -- modulator -- qualifier. All keywords have been rearranged alphabetically after rewriting. At this stage, the occurrence of some flocks of keywords contained some common term(s) therein has been noticed. Such flocks are termed as keyword clusters or clustered keywords. The remaining large number of keywords occurs either twin or without forming any flock, but in single and those keywords are termed as twin and single keywords respectively.
 
The new taxonomy of keywords has been proposed here, and the entire mass of keywords has been classified in accordance with that taxonomy. This taxonomy is based on four major criteria of keywords, these are: associativeness to the content, chronological appearance, frequency of occurrence and category. The number of classes under each criterion is 3, 4, 3 and 6 respectively. It is to be noted that each class under each criterion can overlap with other three classes from remaining three criteria to form a new class, and in total 3*4*3*6 = 216 classes can be formed in this way. If the first three criteria are taken under consideration only excluding the fourth criterion 'category', then the total number of possible classes will be 3*4*3 = 36. Out of these 36 classes, only ten classes consist of 80% of total keywords, and the rest 20% keywords are scattered over the remaining 26 classes. Very few classes are highly populated, and majority of the classes
 are almost empty. The detailed mathematical modeling of these ten classes is shown here.
 
In this study, eight parameters have been defined to describe the different behaviours of the keyword(s) and/or keyword cluster(s). The spatial index indicates the intellectual space of a keyword. The informative index indicates the information content of a journal article. The obsolescence index and ephemeral index of a keyword class describe the behaviours of obsolete and ephemeral keywords. A new subject access tool has been introduced and named as Keysaurus, as it indicates the quantitative features of the keywords. The functioning of a keysaurus is based on four parameters of a keyword and/or keyword cluster, these are: stability index, integrated visibility index, momentary visibility index and potency index.
 
This study has been executed for the subject Fermi Liquid, and it can be extended for other subject areas also. The behaviour of keyword(s) from one subject area may or may not match with that from some other subject area. As the area of information science is highly empirical in nature, therefore the results of behavioural studies of keywords can be confirmed only after proper experimentation with a suitable sample.

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Anup Kumar Das
New Delhi, India
http://anupkumardas.blogspot.com/
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