This article analyses the scientific production of publications on altmetrics as an emergent discipline for research evaluation. The research objective was to identify the investigative tendencies that characterize the subject.The analysis studied documents indexed by Web of Science and Scopus databases. About 253 documents were retrieved, showing a growth in articles 2005-2015. We discovered that the most productive authors, journals, institutions, and countries were from Europe and North America. The collaboration networks between authors and institutions reveal a homogenous community formed by the most prolific contributors. The most explored subjects deal with (1) social media and networking, (2) internet,(3) scholarly and scientific communication and publication, (4) open access and public libraries, (5) citation analysis, (6) impact factor measurements, (7) metric disciplines, (8) information analysis, retrieval, and processing, (9) search engines and data bases, and (10) evaluative bibliometrics. We discovered a nucleus of contributors who have attempted to solidify the knowledge area, with emerging principles of high theoretical consistency.• Discussions on alternative metrics started in 2005, but most publications on the topic came after 2010.• Four hundred and forty-seven authors have been identified, of which only nine have published more than four articles.• Half of the publications on the topic come from the United States and the United Kingdom.• The highest co-occurrence of terms was social media-altmetrics, followed by Twitter-altmetrics.
Purpose
The evolution of the socio-cognitive structure of the field of knowledge management (KM) during the period 1986–2015 is described.
Design/methodology/approach
Records retrieved from Web of Science were submitted to author co-citation analysis (ACA) following a longitudinal perspective as of the following time slices: 1986–1996, 1997–2006, and 2007–2015. The top 10% of most cited first authors by sub-periods were mapped in bibliometric networks in order to interpret the communities formed and their relationships.
Findings
KM is a homogeneous field as indicated by networks results. Nine classical authors are identified since they are highly co-cited in each sub-period, highlighting Ikujiro Nonaka as the most influential authors in the field. The most significant communities in KM are devoted to strategic management, KM foundations, organisational learning and behaviour, and organisational theories. Major trends in the evolution of the intellectual structure of KM evidence a technological influence in 1986–1996, a strategic influence in 1997–2006, and finally a sociological influence in 2007–2015.
Research limitations
Describing a field from a single database can offer biases in terms of output coverage. Likewise, the conference proceedings and books were not used and the analysis was only based on first authors. However, the results obtained can be very useful to understand the evolution of KM research.
Practical implications
These results might be useful for managers and academicians to understand the evolution of KM field and to (re)define research activities and organisational projects.
Originality/value
The novelty of this paper lies in considering ACA as a bibliometric technique to study KM research. In addition, our investigation has a wider time coverage than earlier articles.
En este estudio se describen bibliométricamente los eventos cubanos Congreso Internacional de Información (INFO) y Taller Internacional sobre Inteligencia Empresarial y Gestión del Conocimiento en la Empresa (IntEmpres) durante el periodo 2002-2012. Son aplicados indicadores de productividad de autores, países, años, instituciones, idioma, tipo de estudio (teórico/empírico) y co-ocurrencia de términos. Se obtuvo un total de 1342 ponencias que resaltan a Cuba, México, Brasil y España como los países más participantes. Se destacan autores de algunos de estos países, procedentes mayormente del sector universitario. Los estudios presentados son mayormente empíricos, desde donde se destacan cinco líneas temáticas: (1) bibliometría, (2) educación y alfabetización en información, (3) gestión de información y del conocimiento, (4) actividad bibliotecaria y diseminación de información, y (5) tecnología de la información. Fueron obtenidos patrones de la productividad investigativa en información a través de dos de los eventos científicos más representativos dentro de la comunidad científica iberoamericana.
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