A Scientometric Assessment of Wind Energy  Research Productivity: A Scientometric Study

Mr. P. Kanagavel; Dr. S. Gomathinayagam; Dr. S.Srinivasaragavan; Dr. R.U. Ramasamy

Volume : II, Issue : V, May - 2013

A Scientometric Assessment of Wind Energy Research Productivity: A Scientometric Study

Mr. P. Kanagavel, Dr. S. Gomathinayagam, Dr. S. Srinivasaragavan, Dr. R. U. Ramasamy

Abstract :

Wind energy research is one among the emerging and thrust areas all over the world as the wind power is becoming an alternate energy source to meet the energy demand and also provides solution to climate change and other environmental issues. This paper attempts to highlight quantitatively the growth and development of research on wind energy across the globe in terms of publication output as per Science Citation Index (1970–2011). The corresponding literatures were analysed by Scientometric methods and research landscape was established. The study also discusses detailed quantitative analysis of Indian contributions on wind energy research. Measuring the research productivity, identifying the human resource and organizational potentials in the wind energy and applied areas in different geographical regions enable the core researchers to identify the opportunities for academic and scientific research in this domain. Wind energy keywords are used in Web of Science database to study the research landscape and citation index. During 1970 to 2011 a total of 16, 407 research articles have been published by the scientists in the field of �wind energy�. There were only five publications in 1970. Thereafter, a steady growth was observed up to 1990 and then rapid growth was observed, mainly due to serious oil crisis. It is studied that maximum number of papers (1874) were published in the year 2010. USA with 4446 (27.1 %) and UK with 1485 (9.1%) publications were the top two countries who published work on wind energy. India has contributed 468 papers (2.9%). Authorship and collaboration trend has been towards multi–authored papers, as 79.32 per cent of the papers were collaborative. The journals most preferred by the scientists for publication of papers were: Journal of Renewable energy with 840 papers, followed by the Energy Policy with 426 papers and Journal of wind engineering and industrial aerodynamics with 398 papers. English was the most predominant language (97%) used by the scientists for communication. The same study was also done in Indian context and the results were discussed. Further, an attempt is made to measure the performance of researchers and their research concentration in the field of wind energy research.