Does the literature published by the Institute for Medical Research Malaysia from 2015 to 2024 fit Bradford's law of scattering? A scientometric analysis

Abstract

Bradford's Law of Scattering, a foundational concept in bibliometrics, describes how research articles on a given subject are distributed across journals, with a small core of frequently used titles and a larger number of peripheral outlets. Determining the distribution of IMR will enable the institution's researchers to identify the core journals in their respective disciplines. This study applied Bradford's Law to examine the publication patterns of the Institute for Medical Research (IMR), Malaysia, using data retrieved from the Scopus database between 2015 and 2024. In addition, to test whether IMR's publications followed Bradford's Law, the dataset was analysed using the Bradford Multiplier (k), Bradford's graph formulation, and the Leimkuhler model. The analysis demonstrated that 1,188 articles were published across 552 different journals in the last decade, reflecting both the diversity of IMR's research output and the breadth of its readership. “Tropical Biomedicine” emerged as the most frequent outlet, publishing 46 of these articles. IMR's publications followed Bradford's Law closely, with an error margin of only 0.9%. Verification using the Leimkuhler model and Bradford's graphical Formulation further confirmed the fit, yielding an even smaller error rate of 0.078%. Complementary keyword mapping with VOSviewer revealed the thematic diversity of IMR's publications, spanning from medical entomology, public health, tool validation and reliability, nutrition, and immunology, among others.