The research front of information science : a bibliometric study

The aim of this study is to analyze and describe the research front within information science. To reach this purpose we ask the following research question: Which research themes can be identified within the subject field of information science by using bibliographic coupling in combination with cluster analysis.The data for our study consists of articles from the journals Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology and Journal of Documentation throughout the years 2004-2006. The bibliographic information from the articles was analyzed with the combined methods of bibliographic coupling and cluster analysis. This gave fifteen clusters within which we identified research themes. When analyzing these results we found four main fields of research within the research front of information science: Information retrieval, bibliometrics, knowledge organization and information science as research discipline. Information retrieval proved to be the largest field of research followed by bibliometrics and thereafter the two significantly smaller fields of research knowledge organization and information science as research discipline. When comparing our results with previous research we found that despite different choice of methods and data, there were some similarities.Uppsatsnivå: