Cross-disciplinary collaboration versus coexistence in LIS serials: analysis of authorship affiliations in four European countries

The interdisciplinary nature of library and information science (LIS) research has been highlighted for some time now. The term 'interdisciplinary' is used primarily in the LIS literature as a general concept with different meanings that refer either to the coexistence of researchers from different scientific fields or to cross-disciplinary collaboration expressed in the form of coauthorship. This study analyses the disciplinary profile of LIS researchers with a view to ascertaining the actual level of cross-disciplinary collaboration and identifying all fields involved. Because of the complexity of identifying accurate affiliations at knowledge area level, the study was limited to authors from France, Germany, Spain and the UK. This analysis of authorship affiliation was performed based on research published in LIS serial titles indexed in Scopus during the 2010-2017 period. A rigorous and laborious process of identifying author affiliations was carried out. This involved checking the authorship of each paper and complementing this with information from websites, scientific social networks and other research endeavours whenever ambiguous situations arose. We observed that LIS departments produce barely a third of the research published in serial titles in the LIS subject category. Cross-disciplinary collaboration among all of the scientific fields involved is low, and even lower in LIS than in other fields. The low level of cross-disciplinary collaboration in LIS contradicts the interdisciplinary nature of LIS highlighted in the literature

Mapping information research in Canada = Cartographier la recherche en science de l’information au Canada

This study examines the Canadian information research landscape through the lens of the eight academic units hosting ALA-accredited programs. We created a citation-based network utilizing the scholarly articles published by the faculty members and PhD students at each academic unit to identify and characterize distinct research clusters within the field. Then we determined how the publications and researchers from each unit are distributed across the clusters to describe their area of specialization. Our findings emphasize how the inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary nature of the Canadian information research landscape forms a rich mosaic of information scholarship.Cet article examine le paysage canadien de la recherche en sciences de l’information à travers le prisme des huit unités universitaires offrant des programmes d’études accrédités par l'ALA. Nous avons réalisé un réseau basé sur les citations en utilisant les articles scientifiques publiés par les membres du corps professoral et les doctorants de chaque unité universitaire pour identifier et caractériser des grappes de recherche distinctes dans le domaine. Ensuite, nous avons déterminé comment les publications et les chercheurs de chaque unité sont répartis dans les grappes de recherche pour décrire leur domaine de spécialisation. Nos résultats soulignent comment la nature inter-, multi- et transdisciplinaire du paysage canadien de la recherche en sciences de l’information forme une riche mosaïque de travaux dans le domaine de l’information

Characteristics of LIS Research Articles Affecting Their Citation Impact

The paper analyses the citation impact of Library and Information Science, LIS for short, research articles published in 31 leading international LIS journals in 2015. The main research question is: to what degree do authors' disciplinary composition in association with other content characteristics of LIS articles affect their citation impact? The impact is analysed in terms of the number of citations received and their authority, using outlier normalization and subfield normalization. The article characteristics analysed using quantitative content analysis include topic, methodology, type of contribution, and the disciplinary composition of their author teams. The citations received by the articles are traced from 2015 to May 2021. Citing document authority is measured by the citations they had received up to May 2021. The overall finding was that authors' disciplinary composition is significantly associated with citation scores. The differences in citation scores between disciplinary compositions appeared typically within information retrieval and scientific communication. In both topics LIS and computer science jointly received significantly higher citation scores than many disciplines like LIS alone or humanities in information retrieval, or natural sciences, medicine, or social sciences alone in scientific communication. The paper is original in allowing joint analysis of content, authorship composition, and impact.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figure

Largest contribution to LIS by external disciplines as measured by the characteristics of research articles

The paper analyses Library and Information Science (LIS) articles published in leading international LIS journals based on their authors’ disciplinary backgrounds. The study combines content analysis of articles with authors’ affiliation analysis. The main research question is: Are authors’ disciplinary backgrounds associated with choice of research topics and methods in LIS articles? The study employs a quantitative content analysis of articles published in 30 + scholarly LIS journals in 2015, focusing on research topics and methods. The articles are also assigned to three disciplinary categories based on authors’ affiliations: External (no authors from LIS institutions), Internal (all authors from LIS institutions), and Mixed (some authors from LIS institutions, some from outside). The association of articles’ disciplinary categories with article research topics and methods is analysed quantitatively. Most research contributions to LIS come from external articles (57%). However, LIS scholars have a clear majority in research on L&I services and institutions (68%), while external scholars dominate the contributions in Information retrieval (73%) and Scientific communication (Scientometrics, 69%). Internal articles tend to have an intermediary’s (29%) or end-user’s (22%) viewpoint on information dissemination while the external ones have developer’s viewpoint (27%) or no dissemination viewpoint (49%). Among research strategies, survey (29%) and concept analysis (23%) dominate internal articles, survey (28%) and citation analysis (19%) dominate mixed articles, and survey (20%) and citation analysis (19%) dominate external articles. The application profiles of research strategies varied somewhat between disciplinary categories and main topics. Consequently, the development of LIS in the areas of Information retrieval, Information seeking, and Scientific communication seems highly dependent on the contribution of other disciplines. As a small discipline, LIS may have difficulties in responding to the challenges of other disciplines interested in research questions in these three areas.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Disciplinary contributions to research topics and methodology in Library and Information Science—Leading to fragmentation?

The study analyses contributions to Library and Information Science (LIS) by researchers representing various disciplines. How are such contributions associated with the choice of research topics and methodology? The study employs a quantitative content analysis of articles published in 31 scholarly LIS journals in 2015. Each article is seen as a contribution to LIS by the authors' disciplines, which are inferred from their affiliations. The unit of analysis is the article-discipline pair. Of the contribution instances, the share of LIS is one third. Computer Science contributes one fifth and Business and Economics one sixth. The latter disciplines dominate the contributions in information retrieval, information seeking, and scientific communication indicating strong influences in LIS. Correspondence analysis reveals three clusters of research, one focusing on traditional LIS with contributions from LIS and Humanities and survey-type research; another on information retrieval with contributions from Computer Science and experimental research; and the third on scientific communication with contributions from Natural Sciences and Medicine and citation analytic research. The strong differentiation of scholarly contributions in LIS hints to the fragmentation of LIS as a discipline.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Researchers’ use of social network sites : a scoping review

The study is a scoping review of 80 research articles in LIS and related fields (2004-2014) on the use of social network sites by researchers. The results show that social network sites are used as part of scholarly life, yet with disciplinary differences. It is also shown that the area lacks methodological, theoretical and empirical coherence and theoretical stringency. The most salient strands of research (General uptake, Outreach, Special tools/cases, Assessing impact, Practices/new modes of communication) are mapped and ways to improve research in the field are identified. This provides a first step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the roles of social network sites in scholarship

Application of Interdisciplinary Theory of Genres in LIS

Purpose/Thesis: The article presents the possibilities of using the interdisciplinary theory of genres, developed in the study of linguistics, literary studies, rhetoric, sociology, philosophy, psychology and other disciplines, in library and information science (LIS). The article argues the application of genre theory to LIS offers a new and interesting interdisciplinary perspective. Approach/Methods: A critical analysis of the literature on the subject introduces the basic premises of the interdisciplinary theory of text/information genres in its historical development in the world and in Poland. A similar method was used to present the most important directions genre theory opens to LIS. Results and conclusions: Before genre theory was first applied to LIS, it was developed in disciplines such as linguistics, literature, rhetoric, communication and media, discourse analysis, sociology, pedagogy and others and in many countries on all continents (mainly in the USA, Australia, Brazil and Scandinavian countries). The theory’s success is a result of its interdisciplinary development, beginning from linguistic and classical rhetorical genres approach and problems of categorizing texts to “de facto genres” and their function in everyday communication activities (social/rhetoric approach). Applied to LIS, it frames information objects as social constructs whose meaning is constructed in social discourse, driven by genre knowledge. The library and other information systems should be treated as a social communication activity in the recurrent situation of organizing and retrieving information. It means that the work of a librarian (or other information organizers) involves rhetorical activity of creating information objects, as does the work of other information creators, e.g. authors of scholarly publications. The functioning of information system, i.e. production and organization of textual information should be investigated using methods applied in other disciplines, especially humanities and social sciences, as it allows for a broader research perspective. Originality/Value: The article describes the possibilities of applying genre theory in LIS research, which still do not receive the attention they merit. A wider knowledge of the genre theory would make possible collaborative research involving scholars of other disciplines such as linguistics and sociology

Information exchange on an academic social networking site: A multidiscipline comparison on researchgate Q&A

The increasing popularity of academic social networking sites (ASNSs) requires studies on the usage of ASNSs among scholars and evaluations of the effectiveness of these ASNSs. However, it is unclear whether current ASNSs have fulfilled their design goal, as scholars' actual online interactions on these platforms remain unexplored. To fill the gap, this article presents a study based on data collected from ResearchGate. Adopting a mixed-method design by conducting qualitative content analysis and statistical analysis on 1,128 posts collected from ResearchGate Q&A, we examine how scholars exchange information and resources, and how their practices vary across three distinct disciplines: library and information services, history of art, and astrophysics. Our results show that the effect of a questioner's intention (i.e., seeking information or discussion) is greater than disciplinary factors in some circumstances. Across the three disciplines, responses to questions provide various resources, including experts' contact details, citations, links to Wikipedia, images, and so on. We further discuss several implications of the understanding of scholarly information exchange and the design of better academic social networking interfaces, which should stimulate scholarly interactions by minimizing confusion, improving the clarity of questions, and promoting scholarly content management

Other-Field Citations Rates of Library and Information Science Literature

This study looks at other-field citation rates of library and information science (LIS) literature. It focuses on ten prolific library and information science researchers and the amount of other-field citations they each received in an effort to determine how applicable LIS literature is to other related fields. While other-field citations were found to be rising to LIS literature, LIS received other-field citation rates are still much lower when compared to other related fields' rates

LAM-Related Research Funded Under Spain’s National Research Agenda (2010 – 2020)

This study analysed and contextualised research on LAMs (acronym for libraries, archives and museums) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under competitive calls for projects from 2010 to 2020. The ultimate intention was to verify the existence or otherwise of a national research agenda on these cultural institutions. The initial search and location of Spanish Ministry-funded projects in official sources was followed by data processing and grouping by subject category. A total of 145 projects were analysed. The results showed LAM projects to be scant in number, highly varied in terms of subject matter, poorly funded, widely scattered across a number of areas of knowledge although with a prevalence of the humanities, and highly concentrated in certain institutions and disciplines. The subject-based analysis characterised LAM institutions, from the research perspective, as tools supporting other types of research but not themselves objects of study. None of the nationwide research plans was observed to include LAMs as a line of research. This study has essentially two practical implications. 1. It underscores the need for greater transparency among research project funding agencies; and 2. it defends the inclusion of LAMs among the items on a country’s national research agenda deserving of funding to enhance awareness of their value, purpose and projects