Publication analysis : Bibliometric analysis of the subject area of evidence based practice in social work

This thesis examines the scientific publishing in the subject area of evidence based practice EBP in social work. Issues are: How has this publishing evolved, separately and compared to the publishing about evaluation in social work? What authors/countries have produced the largest numbers of articles? What journals have published the largest numbers of articles? Which are the most frequent co-occurrences of a selection of terms? 161 records for articles from 50 different journals were selected from Social Services Abstracts using subject of journal and a query as criteria. For each year, the number of articles about evaluation in social work was larger than about EBP. A decline in the publishing about evaluation coincide with a growth in EBP after the year 2000. Five authors have contributed to more than two articles. The most frequent of the authors countries are USA and UK. Journals were ranked by the number of articles. 58 of the articles are published in five journals. The scattering of articles do not clearly show the typical pattern of Bradfords law, which may indicate that the field has not reached maturity. A co-word analysis within the set of documents shows that a group of terms about children and families co-occur with EBP more frequently than term groups about drug use/alcoholism and mental health. Bibliometrics is a challenging field for information professionals, where special and academic librarians can offer innovative services to their organizations.Uppsatsnivå: