Introduction

Chemical signals that convey information between members of the same species are commonly termed pheromones. This term was first used by Karlson and Luscher (1959) who defined pheromone as substances secreted outside of an individual and received by a second individual of the same species in which they release a specific reaction involving either the release of a specific behaviour or physiological change in the recipients’ endocrine or reproductive system. Based on the types of response by recipients, the pheromones are classified as “primer”, “releaser” and “imprinting”. Primer pheromones induce a delayed response to prolonged stimulation mediated through central nervous system (CNS) and endocrine system. A number of primer pheromonal effects have been studied leading to the establishment of concrete ideas regarding their influences on reproductive functions. Releaser pheromones induce a rapid behavioural response in the recipients, generally mediated through the CNS. Sexual attraction, evocation of aggression, recognition, alarming behaviour and mother-young interactions are examples of releaser pheromones. Imprinting pheromones organizes the CNS of the pre-weaning off-springs at a critical period and cause permanent alterations of adult behaviour.

Non-intrusive pheromonal studies (i.e., without disturbance of animals during sample collection) are now being used in a variety of disciplines viz., animal science, behavioral ecology, pest management and conservation biology. This field is a new avenue for research on pheromone biology that has proven valuable to determine reproductive status of female (pre-ovulatory, ovulatory, post-ovulatory) in both domestic and non-domestic animals (Rasmussen 1998; Rajanarayanan and Archunan 2004; Sankar and Archunan 2008; Rajagopal et al. 2010).

The basic research on pheromones provides an exciting and excellent model in the field of biology. Even though pheromones have been used for few decades for reproduction and social behaviour, it is only in recent years that interest has been developed to make use of pheromones to improve the animal breeding and management. Potential uses of pheromones are in stimulation of spawning and early puberty, in stimulation and synchronization of oestrus in non-breeding season, in the identification of oestrus/heat period, in improving the maternal bonding, in developing the eco-friendly trap for pests, in reducing the aggressiveness, in enhancing the wild animals conservation, in regulating the human fertility and so on (Archunan 2009).

This paper aims to map pheromone biology research in India over a period of 31 years (1978–2008) as reflected through web of science. The study is intended to examine (a) the volume of work published in the discipline of pheromone biology, (b) the journals that publish the research output on pheromone biology and their standing (as reflected by their impact factors) and (c) the institutions which actively publish in this field.

HistCite developed by Garfield and colleagues (HistCite, http://www.histcite.com/index.htm; Garfield et al. 2003) is an analytical and visualization tool which enables analysis of a subject and helps a searcher to identify the most significant work on a topic and trace its evolution. It also helps to identify highly productive and highly cited authors in any chosen area of research, particularly top and high impact journals and prominent institutions. HistCite has been used in this study.

The paper also calculates the total local citation score (TLCS) and the total global citation score (TGCS) (Thulasi and Arunachalam 2010). TLCS is the number of times an author’s papers included in a collection have been cited by other papers also in the collection. TGCS is the number of times an author’s papers included in a collection have been cited in the Web of Science.

Studies of this kind in many areas have been carried out in the past. Arunachalam and Singh were among the earliest to quantify Indian contribution to the world literature of narrow specialties such as liquid crystals (Singh and Arunachalam 1991a), holography (Singh and Arunachalam 1991b), superconductivity (Arunachalam and Singh 1984) etc. Arunachalam and colleagues have also analysed India’s contribution in mathematics (Arunachalam 1996), materials science (Arunachalam et al. 1996), physics (Arunachalam and Dhawan 1996), medicine (Arunachalam 1997), agriculture (Arunachalam 1998; Arunachalam and Umarani 2001) and life sciences (Arunachalam 1999), fisheries (Jayashree and Arunachalam 2000), tuberculosis research (Arunachalam and Gunasekaran 2002) and international collaboration research in science in India (Arunachalam and Doss 2000). Studies by other authors include areas of chemical engineering (Modak and Madras 2008), structural engineering (Maheswaran et al. 2009) and Nobel Laureate Harald zur Hausen (Munnolli et al. 2011) using electronic versions of appropriate international bibliographic databases. However, the review of literature did not find any scientometric study on pheromone biology.

Objectives of the study

  • To study the year-wise growth of publications; and

  • To study the document type-wise contributions, authorship pattern, source of publications, institution with subdivision and subject domain with GCS and LCS

Methodology

All publications on pheromone biology (keywords used: “pheromone biology”, “chemical signals”, “pheromone compounds”) having ‘India’ in address field were downloaded from Science Citation Index. The data were exported and processed in the HistCite to find out the contribution of Indian institutions in the field of pheromone biology research during years 1978–2008. The year of publication, journals and authors were analyzed and displayed in tables using HistCite. The Global Citation Scores and Local Citation Scores are examined to identify the pattern of research contribution on pheromone biology.

The impact factor values from Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2008 were also added for the identified journal titles.

Analysis

Year wise distribution of research output

The number of records obtained from the SCI database for each publication year is given in Table 1. Journal articles, notes, reviews, letters and conference papers published in the 31-year period were considered for this study. It was found that Indian authors contributed 330 publications out of which 285 were journals articles, 22 notes, 18 reviews, 4 letters and 1 conference paper publication. The first paper in the area of pheromones was published in 1978 and it rose to 27 research articles, the highest during a year 2006.

Table 1 Research output on pheromone biology
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Global and local citation score of pheromone biology researchers

Figure 1 gives a view of the opening page of how the information is displayed in HistCite. The 330 papers have been cited by 1,758 works. From these data, one can obtain a global view of author’s work on pheromone biology and the impact over a 31 year period. For each published paper, we can hotlink to both local and global frequencies of citation (Global Citation Score and Local Citation Score). It is to be noted that the highest number of 176 papers with citation score (Total Global Citation Score) was recorded during 1999 followed by 2002 (137), 2004 (134) and 2005 (111).

Fig. 1
figure 1

A view of the HistCite output

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Source-wise distribution of research output

Out of 285 journal articles, 28 (8.5 %) journal articles were published in Indian Journal of Chemistry Section B-Organic Chemistry Including Medicinal Chemistry and 17 (5.2 %) were published in Current Science and 8 (2.4 %) in Synthetic Communications (Table 2).

Table 2 Leading journals publishing Indian works on pheromone research
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Table 2 also shows that 330 papers have been published by Indian pheromone researchers in journals having impact factors between 0.20 and 4.14. It is to noted that the higher global citation score (GCS) was recorded for the Indian Journal of Chemistry Section B-Organic Chemistry Including Medicinal Chemistry (96) followed by Organic Chemistry (84), Tetrahedron (59), Synthetic Communications (55), Journal of Organic Chemistry (33), Current Science (28) etc.

Author rankings

As per Table 3, Archunan G had published the highest number of 10 papers on the subject followed by Chattopadhyay S (9), Mamdapur VR (9) and Yadav JS (9). However, on the high score of global citations, it was found that Yadav’s 9 papers had 58 citations followed by Mamdapur (47 citations) and Gadagkar (45 citations).

Table 3 Indian authors in the area of pheromone research
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Authorship pattern

It is found that the highest, 27 % (89) of the 330 contributions are by three authors. Single authorship come next with 24 %. There were two contributions with eight authors (Table 4).

Table 4 Authorship pattern
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Leading Indian institutions in pheromone research

Table 5 gives the leading institutions researching on pheromones. Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur ranks first with 31 contributions (4.8 %) followed by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology and so on. In all 200 institutions have contributed the 330 publications during the period of 1978–2008.

Table 5 Leading Indian institutions in pheromone research
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Discussion

The HistCite based analysis of the pheromone biology research in India has shown how the field has evolved and has helped in identifying the institutions that are active and the journals in which they publish their works. Institutions such as Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Bombay, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad are doing considerable research on pheromone biology. Research communications on pheromone biology are published in high impact journals such as Inorganic Chemistry, Journal of Organic Chemistry, Tetrahedron, Tetrahedron Letters etc. by Indian authors. The publication trend shows that research activities are growing in this area.

Three hundred and thirty publications in 31 years in a research field is not reflective of a considerable research contribution. A comparison of Indian pheromone biology research output in relation to the world output may help in understanding the Indian contributions better. The research output on pheromone research from India would be higher than those found indexed in the Web of Science as it is likely that many works might have appeared in publications, including journals not covered by Web of Science. For a comprehensive coverage of research output and analysis, multiple data sources need to be used.