Asian Research Journal of Current Science

Aims: Research on Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) has increased in India, especially in the past twenty years, but the research landscape and the distribution of authorship are not immediately clear. This study identifies prolific contributors, collaborative patterns and the overall author distribution in Indian MOF research in India. Understanding this is needed in order to evaluate research contributions, understanding and identify areas of expertise, and strategically situate research productivity. This study seeks to begin to assess this body of work through the application of Lotka's Law to evaluate author contributions for MOF research published in India from 2000 to 2024 and to evaluate some aspects of collaboration that have occurred. The study is designed to assess quantitatively, and from a scientometric perspective, author contributions and collaboration transnationally.

Study Design: This scientometric study employs a quantitative, descriptive, and analytical design grounded in the retrospective review of secondary sources in academic database.

Place and Duration of Study: The study based on Indian research literature on Metal organic Framework published over twenty five year period from 2004-2024.

Scope of the Study: This study focuses on the Metal–Organic Framework (MOF) research in India, examining publication trends, author productivity, and collaboration patterns. It aims to assess India’s research growth and contribution within the global MOF research landscape, particularly in the bioscience domain, noting that MOFs were recognized by the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development.

Methodology: The primary data for this study were collected from the Web of Science database using the keywords “Metal-Organic Framework” and “India” in the address field. A total of 8,451 records were retrieved and exported in plain text format. The data were downloaded in October 2025 and used as input for HistCite (version 12.03.17) to analyze citation patterns and research trends. The bibliographic data were processed using Bibexcel (version 1.0.3) to evaluate author productivity, collaboration networks, and publication patterns. This methodological approach facilitated a comprehensive quantitative and scientometric assessment of Indian research on Metal-Organic Frameworks, focusing on author contributions, collaboration patterns, and productivity in relation to Lokta’s Law. All processed data were systematically organized and visualized in Google Sheets in accordance with the objectives of the study.

Results: The scientometric analysis of Indian research in Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) from 2000 to 2024 revealed a total of 8,451 publications, which collectively received 279,218 citations. These works involved 42,117 author contributions, indicating strong research collaboration, increasing productivity, and steady scholarly growth in the field. This productivity trend underscores the progressive growth of Indian contributions to marine and oceanographic research, both in terms of publication volume and citation influence. The findings indicate that there has been a steady growth in the number of publications from only a few papers in the early 2000s to more than a double of the total papers after 2010. Almost all of the papers, i.e. 98.63%, were co-authored, and the average number of authors per publication was nearly five, thus reflecting a robust culture of collaboration and interdisciplinary research. When examining authorship patterns, the application of Lotka’s exponent (n = 2) using the formula Y = C/Xⁿ showed that 13,845 authors (69.17%) produced only one publication, while 2,878 (14.37%) authored two papers, and 1,172 (5.85%) published three or more. This confirms that a small group of prolific authors contributed a large share of the total output, consistent with Lotka’s inverse-square law. The K–S test (0.00794) result showed that the Lotka’s distribution was a good fit. The square root of the total number of contributors (about 205 out of 42,117) is responsible for producing around half of the total research output, fitting Price’s Square Root Law. This shows scientific productivity is highly concentrated among a small group of prolific authors, confirming Price’s Law in your dataset.

Conclusion: The research captures the evolution of the Indian MOF study from simply individual efforts to a highly collaborative, globally influential, and institutionally supported research ecosystem, thus emphasizing the critical role of interdisciplinary cooperation and inclusive participation in scientific productivity and impact.