Application of Lotka’s Law to the Scientific Production of Indian Journal of Physics

This paper examines the validity of Lotka's Law regarding authorship distribution in the Indian Journal of Physics. The bulk of the data will be collected from the issues of the Indian Journal of Physics from 2008 to 2017. A list of periodical articles on various aspects of the Indian Journal of Physics published during 2008-2017 was compiled for analysis. Using "full productivity" of authorship, a total of 3,500 personal author names were identified. The results suggest that the author productivity distribution predicted in Lotka's generalized inverse law is not applicable to the Indian Journal of Physics. Using least-squares excluding highly productive authors and maximum likelihood methods, Lotka's Law is found to be applicable to the Indian Journal of Physics.