Publication and citation patterns of Korean LIS research by subject areas

Abstract

Many researchers have suggested careful application of bibliometric indicators to research evaluation because of many factors including disciplinary norms that influence the publication and citation behaviors of researchers. Although some researchers have examined different bibliometric patterns across disciplines, relatively few scholars have focused on whether research performance should be evaluated in a uniform manner across research domains within a single discipline, especially in a multidisciplinary fields such as library and information science (LIS). In order to ascertain whether such subject-specific differences exist in the LIS field, we conducted a bibliometric study that examined the publication and citation patterns across subject areas of LIS research in Korea. The analysis of our study data, which consisted of 6,838 citations to 1,986 domestic papers published between 2001 and 2010 by 163 LIS faculty members in Korea, revealed some evidence of bibliometric pattern differences across subject areas. In particular, we found that the authors in Bibliographic Studies, who were almost twice as productive as authors in other subject areas, received the lowest citation counts, which might be attributed to their different publishing and citing behaviors. Publication and citation patterns across subject areas of LIS papers and observation of the possible effect of sub-disciplinary culture on citing behaviors suggest the need for subject-specific assessment of multidisciplinary research discipline such as LIS. In future studies, we will investigate different publication and citation behaviors of authors by subject areas.

Assessing the research profile of highly productive authors of Pakistan

“…Zhao et al (2021) have conducted a comparative analysis of the research GKMC 73,1/2 productivity of LIS schools of China and the USA and found the growth in WoS publications by Chinese LIS schools. Yang et al (2016) have analyzed the publication and citation patterns of Library and Information research of Korea for identifying the most popular and influential subject areas. Bangani and Onyancha (2021) have evaluated the scientific productivity of national research foundation-rated researchers exploring the impact of their research during 12 years.…”