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

Kuang Hock Lim¹, Yoon Ling Cheong^1*, Jia Hui Lim², Ali Aman Marine¹, Mohd Hazilas Mat Hashim¹, Nor Syahaliyana Saidin¹, Hui Li Lim³

1. Institute for Medical Research, National Institutes of Health, Ministry of Health Malaysia, 40170 Shah Alam, Malaysia

2. School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences, Taylor’s University, Subang Jaya, 47500 Selangor, Malaysia

3. Institute for Clinical Research, National Institutes of Health, Ministry of Health Malaysia, 40170 Shah Alam, Malaysia

*Corresponding author: Cheong Yoon Ling. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

CITATION: Lim, K. H., Cheong, Y. L., Lim, J. H., Marine, A. A., Mat Hashim, M. H., Saidin, N. S., & Lim, H. L. (2025). Does the literature published by the Institute for Medical Research Malaysia from 2015 to 2024 fit Bradford’s law of scattering? A scientometric analysis. International Medical Research Journal, 11(2). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.63719/imrj.2025.11.02.010

Download Full Article

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.

KEYWORDS: Bradford's law of Scattering, Scopus, the Leimkuhler model, verbal Formulation, Bradford's graph