Pareto 80/20 Rule: A New Principle for Serial Subscription

Abstract The purpose of the study is to test the application of the Pareto Principle on the research productivity of journals. Oncology was selected as the subject of study and data were extracted from the “Web of Science.” A series of keywords specifying Oncology and sub-fields have been derived from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). A string of 15 search terms (Lead, Related, and Narrow) was connected using the Boolean operator “OR” to retrieve results limiting the scope to journal articles of India and Iran consecutively. The results weren’t strictly as per Pareto’s Principle of 80/20 rule, but almost close (i.e., 75/25 in the case of India and 65/35 in the case of Iran). The results derived provide strong evidence that the Pareto principle fits the research productivity of journals to a great extend. The study could help libraries to improve the efficiency of collection development and financial management policies. The results will be highly applicable for the acquisition of scholarly journals for libraries, especially for library consortia. This law will be highly useful for cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of serial publications and will help in “subscribing the maximum collection at the least cost.”