Analysis of Postcolonialism Literature

A Bibliometric Study from 1900 to 2017

Abstract

This study intends to exhibit a bibliometric analysis of the literature published in the area of postcolonialism genre of literary theory to measure the standing and influence of the published research in the field of postcolonialism. The data of published documents from 1900 to 2017, related to the field of postcolonialism, was extracted from the database of ISI Web of Science. A total of 1404 documents were found and were analyzed to comprehend the extent of research and annual productivity of postcolonialism literature. Quantitative analysis of the published documents was carried out based on the data collected related to yearly citations, most prolific authors, eminent journals of the subject, most cited articles, the contribution of the countries, and the productivity of institutes. The findings founded on the document types (i.e. proceeding papers, book reviews, editorial materials, articles and reviews). The main findings extracted from the data were: 2016 was the most productive year in terms of publications in the field of post-colonialism, the number of citations increased rapidly in 2007 and kept on rising in the later years. “Journal of Postcolonial Writing" was found to be the top sources of the titles on post-colonialism. The result showed that the National University of Singapore secured the first position for being the most productive institute in the field. The most prolific author was Sidway J.D. Considering the types of documents, it was found that the most cited documents were from research articles. The study will be of value and interest to the researchers in the field of literary theory and would help conduct bibliometric research studies in various areas of literature. The current research was the first of its kind that studied postcolonialism research output from 1900 to 2017.