A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF MA‘ALIM AL-QURAN WA AL-SUNNAH JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY USIM FROM 2005 TO 2020

Since 2005, the Faculty of al-Quran and Sunnah Studies in Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) has published Ma‘alim al-Quran wa al-Sunnah as a trilingual and bi-annual journal. The 16-year-old journal underwent a lengthy process of improvement before obtaining MyCite recognition in 2019. Since its inception, the journal has successfully published a total of 187 quality articles in the field of Quranic and Sunnah studies. This article then examines journal publication statistical data from the first publication in 2005 to 2020. As a result, the quantitative approach to statistically evaluating the findings was chosen as the research method. This study's findings are associated with writing patterns such as writing language, author gender, authors affiliation, writing frequency, and writing field. According to the findings, 408 authors published a total of 186 articles, with the majority of 323 are men. The data also show that 116 articles were in Arabic, 54 articles were in Malay, and the rest were in English. In this journal, single authorship is the most preferred method (92 articles), and the highest page number ratio is 11 to 20 pages (78 articles). Quranic studies account for 53.23% of the articles, and thematic studies are the most popular among authors, accounting for 55 articles. Malaysian authors contribute the most articles (267) followed by Jordanians (41). The authors with the most contributions, 250 in total, were all affiliated with USIM.


INTRODUCTION
Writing in academic journals is one of the methods used by scholars to spread knowledge throughout societies. As a result, academic journal writing has facilitated the advancement of knowledge. The primary objective of publishing a journal in the field of Islamic Studies is to develop and provide a platform for academicians to present their opinions in their respective fields of expertise. Academics, students, and researchers could use published journal articles as reading material and reference sources.
Since 2005, the Faculty of Quranic and Sunnah Studies at USIM has published its official journal, in maintaining the noble tradition of k-sharing. This academic journal is named Ma'alim al-Quran wa al-Sunnah, and it is published periodically. The first edition of this journal was published in 2005 and has since been published annually. It was published biannually in April and October beginning in 2017. Initially, the journal was printed and distributed in the form of book prints. It is then republished digitally via its website, with the Online Journal System (OJS) managing its processes. The articles published are concerned with the fields of Qur'anic and Prophetic Tradition studies, issues, and challenges, in three languages: Malay, English and Arabic.
There is a need to analyse the articles published in Islamic studies' journals in assisting academicians to acknowledge the writing trends to choose the right publication for their research and interests. Besides, this journal has not yet been analysed throughout its years of publication. Therefore, this article aims to focus on the writing patterns related to gender, authors' affiliations, fields of research, and analyses them statistically.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study included all articles published in Ma'alim al-Quran wa al-Sunnah Journal between 2005 and 2020. These articles were obtained from the website's online digital editions, which can be found at https://jmqs.usim.edu.my/index.php/jmqs. The collected data were then analysed using Microsoft Excel to obtain the study's results. The researcher used descriptive analysis to determine the distribution of the identified patterns. The analysis is then presented in the form of a table.

Bibliometric Studies
The term bibliometric was first coined by Alan Pritchard 1 to quantify the processes of all forms of written communication. Biblio means book and metric means a scale or measure. Then, bibliometric means application of statistical studies in library and information science. Next, bibliometric can also be defined as the study and measurement of the publication pattern of all forms of written communication and their author. 2 It is also a quantitative study of works of literature as provided in bibliographies. The commonly used bibliometric techniques are citation analysis and content analysis.
There are many works have been conducted in the field of journal related to the bibliometric study. According to Abid Hussain et. al. 3 , their article was to evaluate the scholarly communication of research journal using the bibliometric parameters. Each scholarly article was analyzed from different aspects to find out the year-wise distribution of articles, authorship pattern, gender-wise distribution, length of articles, cited documents per articles and countrywise contribution of authors. The study revealed that the major contribution of male authors, Pakistani authors were contributing more as compare to the rest of the world, books were cited 67.36% followed by journals as a cited document. A reasonable number of articles are of length 1-5 pages, followed by 20 -30 pages. The majority of the articles are single-authored; female contribution is minimal.
Haque et. al. 4 analyzes in their article based on various bibliometric aspects like the yearwise contribution of articles, year-wise growth of publication, average publication per author, subject-wise distribution of articles, the geographical distribution of articles, authorship pattern, author productivity, degree of collaboration, reference distribution pattern and length of reference distribution. Based on the results of the study from the 35 of the worlds contributed countries Nigeria is in the top rank with 36.33% contributions. Two authorship is leading authorship trend, and also Multi-Authored has shown the unique number of contributions with the 0.71 rates of the degree of collaboration.

Establishment of Ma'alim al-Quran wa al-Sunnah
This trilingual academic journal is produced by the Faculty of Quranic and Sunah Studies, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia since 2005. Articles are either in Arabic or English or Malay languages after being double-blinded. Periodically publish annually and then biannually starting from 2017 (in April and October). It is dedicated to present, promote, enhance and contribute to publishing original articles, research's results, case studies and book reviews related to the field of Islamic studies.
The Editorial Board is responsible for preventing publication malpractice. Unethical behaviour is unacceptable and plagiarism is unaccepted. Submitting authors must self-affirm that manuscript contents are original, unpublished before in any language partially or fully. and is not currently submitted for other publication elsewhere 5 . Chief editors monitor all the process of publication of this journal and they are, since the establishment, as stated in Table 1. (Source: S.N. Shaari 10 )

FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
Ma'alim al-Quran wa al-Sunnah, a trilingual academic journal since 2005, has published its 21 st issue in the year 2020. The data shown below is from the 16-year publication of the journal, beginning from 2005 until 2020. Two issues were published as special editions in 2019 and 2020. 11  Table 2 shows the number and average length of articles published in this journal from 2005 to 2020. According to the table, 21 publications were published with a total of 186 articles written by 408 authors. Meanwhile, the highest number of articles was 12 in three issues, notably 2018 (2) Table 3 depicts the pattern of authors in the journal from 2005 to 2020, with more single-authored publications. Single-authoring accounted for the most articles (92), while dual authoring accounted for the second most (38 articles). There are 8 articles written by more than 5 people, with two of them written by 10 people. The main justification for this was most likely due to the contribution of research members in the article based on the research grants. According to the table, single-authorship is the most preferred method in this journal.   Table 4 shows the frequency of contributors to gender-based articles from 2005 to 2020. The overall amount of article authors in the journal is 408, with men outnumbering women. According to the table below, 323 articles were written by men (80.05 percent) and only 73 by women (19.95 percent). However, after 2016, female authors' involvement in contributing to the results of their writing in the journal increased.  Table 5 describes the ratio of the number of pages of published articles in this journal from 2005 to 2020. The highest page number ratio is 11 to 20 pages with a total of 78 articles, followed by 21 to 30 pages with 46 articles. The journal limits article submissions to 15 to 20 pages, but the number of pages published probably increases with the margin setting process. So far, this guideline was not strictly followed by chief editors due to their justifications. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

Article Study Scope
The frequency of the study scope in the journal is shown in examine the study scope that has been written in each article in this journal, which is very broad and does not focus on a single study scope.  Table 8 shows the languages used to author the article from 2005 to 2020, which are three: Malay, English, and Arabic. According to the analysis of the below chart, Arabic dominated the language of writing an article when compared to two other languages, with the highest total of 116 articles (62.37%) compared to Malay as a second choice in writing articles for a total of 54 articles (29.03%). While English is the third most popular language for article authors in the Ma'alim al-Quran wa al-Sunnah journal, with only 16 articles (8.60%).  Table 9 shows the countries of origin or residence of the authors from 2005 to 2020, involving 23 countries: Malaysia, Jordan, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iraq, Ivory Coast, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Thailand, China, Algeria, Iran, India, Yemen, and others. Malaysian authors contribute the most 267 authors, followed by Jordan 41 authors.

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
The bibliometric method is used for a variety of purposes, including identifying various scientific measures, interpreting scientific findings, and forecasting field potential. USIM's Ma'alim al-Quran wa al-Sunnah Journal is one of the most recent database platforms to include articles on Quranic and Sunnah studies. Numerous authors from around the world contribute their ideas towards al-Quran and Hadis in research by creating papers and indirectly publishing them through this platform, allowing students and lecturers to complete their learning, teaching, and study regarding Al-Quran and Hadith.
From the beginning of its publication until the present, the editorial team, led by several competent academics, has succeeded in elevating Ma'alim al-Quran wa al-Sunnah to a proud level of achievement. This journal could be accessed freely without any subscription. It progresses from a once-a-year publication to a bi-annual publication beginning in 2017 and continues to expand steadily. During the 16-year of establishment, a total of 186 articles were published with a total of 408 authors with men were dominant of 79.17%. A total of 92 articles are single-authored (49.20%). This description may be due to the journal scope that is more theoretical than empirical studies.
Aside from that, scholars could take lessons more about al-Quran and Hadis publications in English.
For future advancement, the editorial team must meet certain requirements in accordance with the procedure established in higher levels of journal indexing, such as ERA and Scopus. They should therefore study the eligibility requirements and put more effort to obey the regulations. As a consequence, the academic community, particularly students and academicians, will be encouraged to submit articles in the coming years.