Interdisciplinarity in Students’ Research Papers: The Impact of Assignment Requirements on Students’ Use of Interdisciplinary Sources in an LIS Research Methods Course

Library and information science (LIS) is an interdisciplinary field; however, historical studies of the use of sources and literature outside of library science indicate a lack of use of interdisciplinary sources. Research also shows reliance on a handful of sources. This study will explore the influence of strategic assignment requirements for a final paper on students’ use of interdisciplinary sources in their work

Global Research Trends and Hot Topics on Library and Information Science: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract Background and objective: One of the approaches to represent scientific publications in a field of science is to determine research trends and hot topics. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the research trends on the Library and Information Science (LIS) in the Scopus database during 2011-2020 and specify the hot topics in this field from July 2020 to July 2021. Materials and Methods: This study used scientometric techniques. The research population consisted of all papers in the field of LIS from July 2011 to July 2021. The data were collected from the Scopus database. The results were limited to 2011-2020 for determining the research trends in the field of LIS and from July 2020 to July 2021 for specifying the hot topics in this field. Data were analyzed using the word co-occurrence and social network analysis techniques, and UCINet, NetDraw, and VOSviewer software were used to draw scientific maps and identify core topics and individuals. Results: The keywords Systematic Review (frequency=531) and Bibliometrics (frequency=51) had the highest and lowest frequencies, respectively. Libraries and information technology (n=151), research methods (n=70), and databases (n=23) were the three important topic clusters in the study area, in which the United States, China, and the United Kingdom were the three most active countries, respectively. The Department of Library and Information Science, University of London, with 71 documents, and the Department of Information Management, University of Punjab, with 55 documents, had the most significant contribution of article publication among the influential institutions. Moreover, Zhang, Yut, and Wang, Liying each with 27 documents, and Li, Xiano with 24 documents were three active and influential authors in this field. In addition, systematic review , diffusion pattern , and bibliometric were also three hot topics. Conclusion: This study revealed that the orientation of the LIS research is going from traditional topics toward novel and emerging technologies. The results of this study can provide valuable information to researchers in LIS at the domestic and international levels

How important is computing technology for library and information science research?

© 2015 Elsevier Inc. Computers in library and information science (LIS) research have been an object of study or a tool for research for at least fifty years, but how central are computers to the discipline now? This research analyses the titles, abstracts, and keywords of forty years of articles in LIS-classified journals for trends related to computing technologies. The proportion of Scopus LIS articles mentioning some aspect of computing in their title, abstract, or keywords increased steadily from 1986 to 2000, then stabilised at about two thirds, indicating a continuing dominance of computers in most LIS research. Within this general trend, many computer-related terms have peaked and then declined in popularity. For example, the proportion of Scopus LIS article titles, abstracts, or keywords that included the terms "computer" or "computing" decreased fairly steadily from about 20% in 1975 to 5% in 2013, and the proportion explicitly mentioning the web peaked at 18% in 2002. Parallel analyses suggest that computing is substantially less important in two related disciplines: education and communication, and so it should be seen as a key aspect of the LIS identity.Published versio

Mapping recent information behavior research: an analysis of co-authorship and cocitation networks

There has been an increase in research published on information behavior in recent years, and this has been accompanied by an increase in its diversity and interaction with other fields, particularly information retrieval (HR). The aims of this study are to determine which researchers have contributed to producing the current body of knowledge on this subject, and to describe its intellectual basis. A bibliometric and network analysis was applied to authorship and co-authorship as well as citation and co-citation. According to these analyses, there is a small number of authors who can be considered to be the most productive and who publish regularly, and a large number of transient ones. Other findings reveal a marked predominance of theoretical works, some examples of qualitative methodology that originate in other areas of social science, and a high incidence of research focused on the user interaction with information retrieval systems and the information behavior of doctors

Evaluación de la actividad científica en ciencia de la información a partir de indicadores bibliométricos y altmétricos

La presente investigación es un análisis de la producción científica en Ciencia de la Informacion (CI), fundamentada en el contexto epistemológico e histórico de la disciplina, para identificar las tendencias de uso de la información en plataformas de publicación formales e informales. A partir de la implementación de indicadores bibliométricos e indicadores alternativos, se pretende establecer. ¿Como la integración de indicadores altimétricos en la evaluación científica, posibilita la identificación de tendencias en la investigación disciplinar? Y si es valido afirmar, que la altmetría es una herramienta confiable y útil para la evaluación de los dominios científicos. Se toma como referente la producción visible en Web of Science durante el periodo 2012- 2016, para identificar las dinámicas científicas de investigación en la CI, a partir de una muestra de 1224 registros en los cuales se utilizan indicadores bibliometricos de producción, citación o impacto e indicadores altimétricos recuperados de las plataformas ResearchGate (RG) y Plum Analytics (PlumX). Los resultados evidencian que los indicadores alternativos aun están en periodo de desarrollo y necesitan normalización; de lo cual se concluye, que la evaluación científica requiere la complementación de modelos métricos clásicos junto a métricas alternativas que permitan identificar las dinámicas sociales y de comunicación que se generan en la comunidad científica más allá del impacto y la citación.This research is an analysis of the scientific activity in Information Science (CI), based on the epistemological and historical context of the discipline, to identify trends in the use of information in formal and informal publishing platforms. Based on the implementation of bibliometric iand alternative indicators, it is intended to establish: How does the integration of altmetric indicators in scientific evaluation make it possible to identify trends in disciplinary research? And, if it is valid to say that altmetrics is a reliable and useful tool for the scientific evaluation of scientific domains. Visible production in Web of Science during the 2012-2016 period is taken as a reference to identify the scientific dynamics of research in the CI, from a sample of 1224 records in which bibliometric indicators of production, citation or impact and altmetric indicators recovered from the ResearchGate (RG) and Plum Analytics (PlumX) platforms are used. The results show that the alternative indicators are still under development and need to be standardized; from which it is concluded that scientific evaluation requires the complementing of classical metric models with alternative metrics that allow identifying the social and communication dynamics generated in the scientific community beyond the impact and citation.Profesional en Ciencia de la Información - Bibliotecólogo (a)Pregrad

New Zealand Published LIS and ARM Research, 2004 - 2014: A Subject Analysis

Research problem: While subject analyses of research topics have been conducted on Library and Information Science (LIS) and Archives and Records Management (ARM) research internationally, such analyses of New Zealand literature are rare, and those that exist are limited to only a part of the literature. Overall, there is very little written analysing LIS and ARM research in New Zealand, and few prior studies analysing the subject trends of New Zealand LIS and ARM research literature. Methodology: A priori content analysis was conducted of a purposefully selected sample of research literature. Journal articles and conference papers from New Zealand LIS and ARM professional journals and conference proceedings, from the period 2004 to 2014 were selected, and the topics of research were categorized using Zins’ (2007) Classification Scheme of Information Science. These were then analyzed to determine which research topics are currently receiving the most interest at present, which are receiving the least attention at present, and how the topics researched have changed and developed over time. Results: It was found that the research topics of most focus were consistently Information Industry Economics and Management and Information/Learning Society. Conversely, the topics receiving the least attention were Diffusion Studies, which did not receive any research attention, and Methodology, which consistently received very low research attention. There were also several other observable changes in the topics of research focus in the literature, with a decline in the topics of Data Organization and Retrieval, Foundations of Information Science, Social Information Science and User Studies, and an increase in Information Ethics and Law and Information Technology. Implications: This research enables researchers to identify research topics of interest, as well as gaps in New Zealand LIS and ARM research literature. New Zealand researchers will be able to identify new research topics to enrich the current body of knowledge, and identifying topics of high activity can have important implications for strategic planning in research and research policy. Researchers in other countries can also use this study to conduct similar studies to explore research literature trends in their own setting, and add to the existing international LIS body of knowledge

The impact of author name disambiguation on knowledge discovery from large-scale scholarly data

In this study, I demonstrate that the choice of disambiguation methods for resolving author name ambiguity can adversely affect our understanding of scholarly collaboration patterns and coauthorship network structures extracted from large-scale scholarly data. By utilizing large-scale bibliometric data, scholars in many fields have gleaned knowledge for use in scholarly evaluation, collaborator recommendations, research policy evaluation, and network-evolution modeling. A common challenge has been that author names in bibliometric data are not properly disambiguated: authors may share the same name (i.e., different authors are sometimes misrepresented to be a single author which can lead to a “merging of identities”). In addition, one author may use name variations (i.e., an author may be represented as two or more different authors which can lead to a “splitting of identities”). When faced with these challenges, most scholars have pre-processed bibliometric data using simple heuristics (e.g., if two author names share the same surname and given name initials, they are presumed to represent the same author identity) and assumed that their findings are robust to errors due to author name ambiguity. I test this long-held assumption in bibliometrics by measuring the impact of author name ambiguity on network properties. I accomplish this under varying conditions, including network size and cumulative time window (from 1991 to 2009) using four large-scale bibliometric datasets that cover: biomedicine, computer science, psychology and neuroscience, and one nation’s entire domestic publication output. For this task, I collate the statistical properties of coauthorship networks constructed from algorithmically disambiguated data (i.e., close to clean data) against those that come from the same networks, but are compromised by misidentified authors via first-initial and all-initials disambiguation methods. In addition, I simulate the levels of merging and splitting incrementally using those empirical datasets. My findings show that initial-based name disambiguation methods can severely distort our understanding of given networks and such distortion gets worse over time. Moreover, the distortion sometimes leads to biased or false knowledge of coauthorship network formation and evolution mechanisms such as preferential attachment generating the power-law distribution of vertex degree and to false validation of theories about the choice of collaborators in scientific research. This may result in ill-informed decisions about research policy and resource allocation. Besides measuring the impact of name ambiguity on network properties, I also test how name ambiguity can be estimated using simple heuristics such as dataset size and how merged author identities can be detected via an author’s ego-network properties to provide a practical guidance for corrective measures. My research calls for further studying the effects of author name ambiguity on coauthorship network properties and is expected to help scholars establish better practices for knowledge discovery from large-scale scholarly data

Open Access Publishing and Scholarly Communication Among Greek Biomedical Scientists

urpose: The purpose of this research is to study in what ways the open access publishing can improve the scholarly communtication among biomedical sciences in Greece over a period of about five years and provide new roles for health librarians to support open access.\ud Methods: The implementation of Critical Realism as research philosophy allowed the multi-level analysis of the research object; a mixture of research tools were used. Supplementary research methods were adopted to provide more accurate and reliable conclusions. The Literature review contributed to the identification of the open access publishing context and the relations which were forming and re-forming in it. Additionally, similar studies were found and the research gaps were identified as well. Bibliometrics demonstrated the participation of Greek scientists in world research could be evaluated. The research was conducted in five world databases (PUBMED, SCI, BIOMED CENTRAL, DOAJ, GOOGLE) for two different periods (2006-2007 and 2011). Publishers? aggrements provided information about the role of Greek biomedical publishers to the awareness of Greek biomedical scientists on journal related issues such as copyright. Additionally, and journal cost analysis presented publishers? subscription and open access policies and provided an approach of the costs requested for the access to journals. Web 2.0 offers new scholarly communication channels that seem to be cheaper and effective ones. The participation of Greek biomedical scientists in social networks such as ResearchGate, LinkedIn was analysed to evaluate the trends towards these new information sources. Case study methodology provided the qualitative and quantitative tools to explain the attitudes and awareness of Greek biomedical stakeholders about open access publishing and open access biomedical journals and also helped to the longitudinal study of the changes. A questionnaire survey among biomedical scientists took place in three phases (2007-early in 2010, September 2010 to May 2011). In addition, Greek biomedical publishers were interviewed in January and February 2010 .\ud Findings: The bibliometric findings indicated an increasing participation of Greek scientists and Greek biomedical journals in world research. Greek biomedical scientists also use social networking as a means of scholarly communication. The questionnaire surveys showed that the physicians are the most active researchers and more familiar with the open access publishing concept. However, across all the phases the majority of Greek biomedical scientists seem to be unaware of aspects of publishing in open access journals, although by the third phase more participants seem to be aware. Greek biomedical publishers seem to approve the deposit in repositories, and the self-archiving process under specific terms, because, the publishers? agreements analysis demonstrated, the publishers want to be the copyright holders and information about authors? rights is omitted. Biomedical scientists are confused over copyright. As far as cost analyses are concerned, the journal prices depend on the publisher (commercial or scientific) and the subscriber (the institutional prices are higher than individual ones). The findngs were interpreted according to Roger?s diffusion of innovations theory and Lewin?s force field analysis.\ud Conclusions: Open access seems to be acceptable in Greece but the stakeholders, including libraries, need to co-operate more. Greek academic biomedical libraries can actively reinforce the driving forces and reduce the restraining forces (around copyright, mainly) (Lewin?s Force Field Analysis) in order to move into the ?refreeze stage?. However, institutional repositories do seem to be an innovation that (according to Rogers? theory) will take time to develop