Sign Language Research 1991-2015: a Bibliometric study with Web of Science

Abstract : Bibliometrics is the study that uses statistical and mathematical methods to analyze the literature of a discipline as it is patterned in its bibliographies. The focus of this paper is to find the status of research productivity in Sign Language covering a period of 1991 – 2015, based on 2656 retrieved records from Web of Science topic search. A sign language, the languages of the deaf is a set of gestures, visual and body language. The study reveals that 4543 authors have contributed 2656 publications during 1991-2015. Results indicate that multi-authorship dominates with (70.64%). In this research area there were 914 journals among which “Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education” stands first with 127 articles. The most prolific author was “Emmorey K” with 74 papers. USA with 1080 publications stands first in country-wise productivity. English language stands first with 2545 publications out of 2656. About 1521 organizations contributed to this research field and University of California, San Diego occupies the first place with 106 papers. Using VOS Viewer the bibliographical coupling of organizations was made. The h-index in this research field is found as 69.