www.IndianJournals.com Members Copy, Not for Commercial Sale Downloaded From IP - 27.0.168.201 on dated 28-Aug-2023 PEARL - A Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 11, No. 4, October-December 2017: 324-342 DOI : 10.5958/0975-6922.2017.00042.0 Indianjournals.com 324 1 Research Scholar, 3 Professor, Department of Library and Information Science, Mizoram University, Tanhril, Aizawl-796004, Mizoram 2 Assistant Librarian, Panjab University Extension Library, Ludhiana-141001, Punjab, India (*Corresponding author) e-mail id: *ashuagrahari@yahoo.com, 2 chaudharycp@gmail.com, 3 drsinghsn@yahoo.com Worldwide Growth and Development of Library and Information Science Journals Ashutosh Agrahari 1 * C.P. Chaudhary 2 S.N. Singh 3 ABSTRACT This empirical study has been conceived to examine the pace of worldwide growth of journal publication in the domain of library and information science (LIS). Data has been recorded from Ulrich International Periodical Directory, 49th edition, and descriptive statistics have been used to analyse the data. Results show that there was the steady growth in LIS journal publication, and it has been noticed that about half of the LIS journals were published from countries like the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom, China, India and Germany. The fifth decade of the twentieth century was very prolific. During the period, 12 countries started journal publication. Europe was the largest contributor to LIS journal of the world. As far as the journals’ language is concerned, English was the most favoured language followed by Chinese. Meanwhile, the share of bilingual journals was just 4.94% of the world output. A matter of concern noted during the study is that only USA and Canada had growth in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Keywords: Journals, Periodicals, Scholarly publication, Scholarly communication, Primary Publication, Journal growth, Library and Information Science INTRODUCTION A journal is a publication which is brought out by learned societies, organisations and institutions in consecutive issues at regular or irregular interval, containing different varieties of peer reviewed or non-peer reviewed research communication. These resources are highly reliable for academic and research purposes. It forms a core of primary information resources, and so every researcher hunts for it to fulfil the need of information. The contents of the journals are based on scientific observations, investigations or experimental research and are more often peer reviewed before getting a final shape. It also contains substantial bibliographies which show the validity of the work. Journals are also known as academic, learned or scholarly. The growth of these journals has been remarkable since their inception. Documentary proof says that the first scholarly journal is ‘Le Journal Des Scavans’ of the ‘Academic Des Science’ from Paris, France (Das, 2015) in 1665; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London also started its official publication form London in the same year. The escalation of scholarly literature in a variety of formats is ever-increasing with time. In terms of scholarly publications like journals, magazines, conference papers, trade publications and monographs, almost all disciplines have witnessed a mushroom growth in their respective fields. Since the establishment of different disciplines (subjects), not only the developed nations but also the developing nations have realised the need and importance of scholarly literatures in different forms as they circulate nascent ideas to the scholars in their areas of study. Journal publication in the