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Meet 1450410107 PDF
Meet 1450410107 PDF
An empirical investigation of citations to 150 trend gives a very good indication of directions of future
publications in the field of Information and Library development of ILS.
Science (ILS) has enabled mapping of the
development of the interdisciplinaryscope of the Literature Review
ILS field. The publications were drawn randomly Numerous papers have declared that information science
in six years between 1975 and 2000, with 25 is an interdisciplinary, meta-field (Brook, 1980; Bates,
articles each from the selected years. Network- 1999; Saracevic, 1999), however, as suggested by Karki
based graphical presentation of number of (1 996), there has not been very much empirical evidence
extradisciplinary citations show that the field either to support or to refute the interdisciplinarity of
attracts a significant wide spectrum of disciplines information science. On the other hand, studies by Broadus
in the domains of science, social science, and the (1971), Gatten (1991), and Bracken & Tucker (1989) found
humanities, and that the kinds of disciplines that library science is much less interdisciplinary than other
interested in the field vary by year. ANOVA result social science disciplines. The self-citation rate for ILS was
based on the number of extradisciplineswas found to be in the range of 74-80% (Peritz, 1981; Bracken
significant and the linear contract between the & Tucker, 1989). In 1999, Buttlar’s data show a lowered
year group of 1975,1980,1985 and the year group rate of self-citation, that of 50%. Buttlar examined 61
of 1990, 1995, 2000 was highly statistically dissertations in Library and Information Science and found
significant. Interdisciplinary diversity was further that roughly half of the time the citations are to the field
examined through measures of Citations Outside itself. On the other hand, disciplines such as Education and
Category and Brillouin’s Index. Kruskal Wallis test Computer Science were highly cited. The author thus
showed significant results, however, when the concluded, “Library and information science is definitely
two measures were considered independently, an interdisciplinary field and has close relationships with
only the contrast of the year of 1990 to the prior the fields of education, computer science, healthlmedicine,
three years was significant. psychology, communications, and business, among others”
(Buttlar, 1999, p241).
Introduction
Multiple measures of interdisciplinarity such as Citations
The interdisciplinary characteristics of Information and Outside Category (COC), Brillouin’s Index, and Pratt Index
Library Science (ILS hereafter, used in this paper as have been proposed and used in the literature to
interchangeable to Library and Information Science) is a quantitatively assess the openness of an academic
long debated issue and the discussion has been often discipline (Choi, 1988; Hurd, 1992; Steele & Stier, 2000;
embedded in the exploration of the disciplinary nature and Morillo, Bordons, & Gomez, 2001). Among them, Pratt
intellectual structure of Library Science or Information index measures the concentration and scattering of
Science itself (Bates, 1999; Saracevic, 1999). The documents (Pratt, 1977). The COC approach calculates the
bibliometric analysis of ILS interdisciplinarity, on the other percentage of total citations that are outside the cited
hand, often reaches the conclusion that ILS is a relatively journal’s subject category. When the citing journal has a
insular field with limited impact on other disciplines subject category that is different from that of the cited
(Broadus, 1971; Peritz, 1981; Bracken & Tucker, 1989). journal, the citing document is perceived as coming from
Such a conclusion, nevertheless, ought to be accurately an area of study that is extradiscipline. Steele and Stier
validated through a detailed inspection with chronological (1999) argue that the COC approach does not provide a
mapping. This study attempts to outline the complete and accurate account of citation data. Instead,
interdisciplinary breadth of the ILS field through studying they suggest that Brillouin’s diversity index (Brillouin,
citations to journal publications within the field. Moreover, 1956) better captures the richness and relative abundance
the development of the ILS interdisciplinarity is captured of observations. The Brillouin’s index (H) is expressed
through examining citations to randomly selected articles in through the following equation:
six selected years from 1975 to 2000. The diversity and
change in the number of extradisciplinary citations over log N!- C(logn,)
three decades is greatly impressive, and the evolutionary
H=
N
Results
The presentation of results will progress from reports of
descriptive data, to social network-based graphical charting Figure 2: Total number of citations to 25 publications in
of interdisciplinary configuration, then to inferential the same years
statistical tests on the significance of change in the years
included. Statistical tests on measures of interdisciplinary Table 1 contains raw counts of citations in categories of
diversity, namely, COC and diversity index, are also total citations, self-citations, and extradisciplinary citations.
presented. It is worth noting that the three years prior to 1990 are all
below 20 whereas in and after 1990 the counts are all above
Publication and Citation Distributions 20. The year of 1990 saw the highest ratio of
extradisciplines versus self-citations.
Figure 1 displays the total frequency of ILS publications
in the year of 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000. Table 1. Raw Frequency of Citation Distributions
While there appears an increment of 500 more publications ~~ ~ ~~
in 1980 as compared to 1975, the uprising peak of 1990 is Year Total Self Extra
~
Number of Extradisciplines
If counting the number of disciplines in extradisciplinary
citations of a given year, the year of 1990 again stands out
to be the one that received the highest number of
extradisciplinary citations per publication (1.16). While all
Figure 1: Total number of publications of sample years other years received less than 1 extradisciplinary citation,
the three years prior to 1990 received less than 0.5
As a comparison, Figure 2 illustrates the total number of extradiscipline per publications. Figure 3 illustrates the
citations to the 25 randomly selected ILS publications of distribution.
the six years. As it is shown, 1995 is the peak time for the
total number of citations, and 1990 received only 51
citations, which are almost 30 citations less than that of
1995. This could mean that in 1990 there are relatively
more noncitations of the publications than those in other
years.