Search

This article compares doctoral students' and faculty members' referencing behavior through the analysis of a large corpus of scientific articles. It shows that doctoral students tend to cite more documents per article than faculty members, and that the literature they cite is, on average, more recent. It also demonstrates that doctoral students cite a larger proportion of conference proceedings and journal articles than faculty members and faculty members are more likely to self-cite and cite theses than doctoral students. Analysis of the impact of cited journals indicates that in health research, faculty members tend to cite journals with slightly lower impact factors whereas in social sciences and humanities, faculty members cite journals with higher impact factors. Finally, it provides evidence that, in every discipline, faculty members tend to cite a higher proportion of clinical/applied research journals than doctoral students. This study contributes to the understanding of referencing patterns and age stratification in academia. Implications for understanding the information-seeking behavior of academics are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing number and diversity of search tools available, interest in the evaluation of search systems, particularly from a user perspective, has grown among researchers. More researchers are designing and evaluating interactive information retrieval ( IIR) systems and beginning to innovate in evaluation methods. Maturation of a research specialty relies on the ability to replicate research, provide standards for measurement and analysis, and understand past endeavors. This article presents a historical overview of 40 years of IIR evaluation studies using the method of systematic review. A total of 2,791 journal and conference units were manually examined and 127 articles were selected for analysis in this study, based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. These articles were systematically coded using features such as author, publication date, sources and references, and properties of the research method used in the articles, such as number of subjects, tasks, corpora, and measures. Results include data describing the growth of IIR studies over time, the most frequently occurring and cited authors and sources, and the most common types of corpora and measures used. An additional product of this research is a bibliography of IIR evaluation research that can be used by students, teachers, and those new to the area. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first historical, systematic characterization of the IIR evaluation literature, including the documentation of methods and measures used by researchers in this specialty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online videos provide a novel, and often interactive, platform for the popularization of science. One successful collection is hosted on the TED ( Technology, Entertainment, Design) website. This study uses a range of bibliometric (citation) and webometric (usage and bookmarking) indicators to examine TED videos in order to provide insights into the type and scope of their impact. The results suggest that TED Talks impact primarily the public sphere, with about three-quarters of a billion total views, rather than the academic realm. Differences were found among broad disciplinary areas, with art and design videos having generally lower levels of impact but science and technology videos generating otherwise average impact for TED. Many of the metrics were only loosely related, but there was a general consensus about the most popular videos as measured through views or comments on You Tube and the TED site. Moreover, most videos were found in at least one online syllabus and videos in online syllabi tended to be more viewed, discussed, and blogged. Less-liked videos generated more discussion, although this may be because they are more controversial. Science and technology videos presented by academics were more liked than those by nonacademics, showing that academics are not disadvantaged in this new media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptualizations of disciplinarity often focus on the social aspects of disciplines; that is, disciplines are defined by the set of individuals who participate in their activities and communications. However, operationalizations of disciplinarity often demarcate the boundaries of disciplines by standard classification schemes, which may be inflexible to changes in the participation profile of that discipline. To address this limitation, a metric called venue-author-coupling ( VAC) is proposed and illustrated using journals from the Journal Citation Report's ( JCR) library science and information science category. As JCRs are some of the most frequently used categories in bibliometric analyses, this allows for an examination of the extent to which the journals in JCR categories can be considered as proxies for disciplines. By extending the idea of bibliographic coupling, VAC identifies similarities among journals based on the similarities of their author profiles. The employment of this method using information science and library science journals provides evidence of four distinct subfields, that is, management information systems, specialized information and library science, library science-focused, and information science-focused research. The proposed VAC method provides a novel way to examine disciplinarity from the perspective of author communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on bias in peer review examines scholarly communication and funding processes to assess the epistemic and social legitimacy of the mechanisms by which knowledge communities vet and self-regulate their work. Despite vocal concerns, a closer look at the empirical and methodological limitations of research on bias raises questions about the existence and extent of many hypothesized forms of bias. In addition, the notion of bias is predicated on an implicit ideal that, once articulated, raises questions about the normative implications of research on bias in peer review. This review provides a brief description of the function, history, and scope of peer review; articulates and critiques the conception of bias unifying research on bias in peer review; characterizes and examines the empirical, methodological, and normative claims of bias in peer review research; and assesses possible alternatives to the status quo. We close by identifying ways to expand conceptions and studies of bias to contend with the complexity of social interactions among actors involved directly and indirectly in peer review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a condensed history of Library and Information Science ( LIS) over the course of more than a century using a variety of bibliometric measures. It examines in detail the variable rate of knowledge production in the field, shifts in subject coverage, the dominance of particular publication genres at different times, prevailing modes of production, interactions with other disciplines, and, more generally, observes how the field has evolved. It shows that, despite a striking growth in the number of journals, papers, and contributing authors, a decrease was observed in the field's market-share of all social science and humanities research. Collaborative authorship is now the norm, a pattern seen across the social sciences. The idea of boundary crossing was also examined: in 2010, nearly 60% of authors who published in LIS also published in another discipline. This high degree of permeability in LIS was also demonstrated through reference and citation practices: LIS scholars now cite and receive citations from other fields more than from LIS itself. Two major structural shifts are revealed in the data: in 1960, LIS changed from a professional field focused on librarianship to an academic field focused on information and use; and in 1990, LIS began to receive a growing number of citations from outside the field, notably from Computer Science and Management, and saw a dramatic increase in the number of authors contributing to the literature of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted a fine-grained prosopography of six distinguished information scientists to explore commonalities and differences in their approaches to scholarly production at different stages of their careers. Specifically, we gathered data on authors' genre preferences, rates and modes of scholarly production, and coauthorship patterns. We also explored the role played by gender and place in determining mentoring and collaboration practices across time. Our biobibliometric profiles of the sextet reveal the different shapes a scholar's career can take. We consider the implications of our findings for new entrants into the academic marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International collaboration is being heralded as the hallmark of contemporary scientific production. Yet little quantitative evidence has portrayed the landscape and trends of such collaboration. To this end, 14,000,000 documents indexed in Thomson Reuters's Web of Science (WoS) were studied to provide a state-of-the-art description of scientific collaborations across the world. The results indicate that the number of authors in the largest research teams have not significantly grown during the past decade; however, the number of smaller research teams has seen significant increases in growth. In terms of composition, the largest teams have become more diverse than the latter teams and tend more toward interinstitutional and international collaboration. Investigating the size of teams showed large variation between fields. Mapping scientific cooperation at the country level reveals that Western countries situated at the core of the map are extensively cooperating with each other. High-impact institutions are significantly more collaborative than others. This work should inform policy makers, administrators, and those interested in the progression of scientific collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study comprises a suite of analyses of words in article titles in order to reveal the cognitive structure of Library and Information Science (LIS). The use of title words to elucidate the cognitive structure of LIS has been relatively neglected. The present study addresses this gap by performing (a) co-word analysis and hierarchical clustering, (b) multidimensional scaling, and (c) determination of trends in usage of terms. The study is based on 10,344 articles published between 1988 and 2007 in 16 LIS journals. Methodologically, novel aspects of this study are: (a) its large scale, (b) removal of non-specific title words based on the 'word concentration' measure (c) identification of the most frequent terms that include both single words and phrases, and (d) presentation of the relative frequencies of terms using 'heatmaps'. Conceptually, our analysis reveals that LIS consists of three main branches: the traditionally recognized library-related and information-related branches, plus an equally distinct bibliometrics/scientometrics branch. The three branches focus on: libraries, information, and science, respectively. In addition, our study identifies substructures within each branch. We also tentatively identify 'information seeking behavior' as a branch that is establishing itself separate from the three main branches. Furthermore, we find that cognitive concepts in LIS evolve continuously, with no stasis since 1992. The most rapid development occurred between 1998 and 2001, influenced by the increased focus on the Internet. The change in the cognitive landscape is found to be driven by the emergence of new information technologies, and the retirement of old ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinarity has been studied using cognitive connections among individuals in corresponding domains, but rarely from the perspective of academic genealogy. This article utilizes academic genealogy network data from 3,038 PhD dissertations in Library and Information Science (LIS) over a span of 80 years (1930-2009) to describe interdisciplinary changes in the discipline. Aspects of academic pedigree of advisors and committee members are analyzed, such as country, school, and discipline of highest degree, to reveal the interdisciplinary features of LIS. The results demonstrate a strong history of mentors from fields such as education and psychology, a decreasing trend of mentors with LIS degrees, and an increasing trend in mentors receiving degrees in computer science, business, and communication, among other disciplines. This work proposes and explores the use of academic genealogy as an indicator of interdisciplinarity and calls for additional research on the role of doctoral committee composition in a student's subsequent academic career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is to examine the interaction of institutions, based on their citation and collaboration networks. The domain of library and information science is examined, using data from 1965-2010. A linear model is formulated to explore the factors that are associated with institutional citation behaviors, using the number of citations as the dependent variable, and the number of collaborations, physical distance, and topical distance as independent variables. It is found that institutional citation behaviors are associated with social, topical, and geographical factors. Dynamically, the number of citations is becoming more associated with collaboration intensity and less dependent on the country boundary and/or physical distance. This research is informative for scientometricians and policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ranking scientific productivity and prestige are often limited to homogeneous networks. These networks are unable to account for the multiple factors that constitute the scholarly communication and reward system. This study proposes a new informetric indicator, P-Rank, for measuring prestige in heterogeneous scholarly networks containing articles, authors, and journals. P-Rank differentiates the weight of each citation based on its citing papers, citing journals, and citing authors. Articles from 16 representative library and information science journals are selected as the dataset. Principle Component Analysis is conducted to examine the relationship between P-Rank and other bibliometric indicators. We also compare the correlation and rank variances between citation counts and P-Rank scores. This work provides a new approach to examining prestige in scholarly communication networks in a more comprehensive and nuanced way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work identifies changes in dominant topics in library and information science (LIS) over time, by analyzing the 3,121 doctoral dissertations completed between 1930 and 2009 at North American Library and Information Science programs. The authors utilize latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to identify latent topics diachronically and to identify representative dissertations of those topics. The findings indicate that the main topics in LIS have changed substantially from those in the initial period (1930-1969) to the present (2000-2009). However, some themes occurred in multiple periods, representing core areas of the field: library history occurred in the first two periods; citation analysis in the second and third periods; and information-seeking behavior in the fourth and last period. Two topics occurred in three of the five periods: information retrieval and information use. One of the notable changes in the topics was the diminishing use of the word library (and related terms). This has implications for the provision of doctoral education in LIS. This work is compared to other earlier analyses and provides validation for the use of LDA in topic analysis of a discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses citations, from 1996 to 2007, to the work of 80 randomly selected full-time, information studies (IS) faculty members from North America to examine differences between Scopus and Web of Science in assessing the scholarly impact of the field focusing on the most frequently citing journals, conference proceedings, research domains and institutions, as well as all citing countries. Results show that when assessment is limited to smaller citing entities (e.g., journals, conference proceedings, institutions), the two databases produce considerably different results, whereas when assessment is limited to larger citing entities (e.g., research domains, countries), the two databases produce very similar pictures of scholarly impact. In the former case, the use of Scopus (for journals and institutions) and both Scopus and Web of Science (for conference proceedings) is necessary to more accurately assess or visualize the scholarly impact of IS, whereas in the latter case, assessing or visualizing the scholarly impact of IS is independent of the database used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilized bibliometric tools to analyze the relationship between two separate, but related, fields: Library and Information Science (LIS) and Management Information Systems (MIS). The top-ranked 48 journals in each field were used as the unit of analysis. Using these journals, field cocitation was introduced as a method for evaluating the relationships between the two fields. The three-phased study evaluated (a) the knowledge imported/exported between LIS and MIS, (b) the body of knowledge influenced by both fields, and (c) the overlap in fields as demonstrated by multidimensional scaling. Data collection and analysis were performed using DIALOG and SPSS programs. The primary findings from this study indicate that (a) the MIS impact on LIS is greater than the reverse, (b) there is a growing trend for shared impact between the two disciplines, and (c) the area of overlap between the two fields is predominately those journals focusing on technology systems and digital information. Additionally, this study validated field cocitation as a method by which to evaluate relationships between fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]