Publications and author cocitations in library and information science in Spain during the period from 1985 to 1994 were analyzed as a measure of the structure, specificity and composition of research fronts in this country. A cocitation matrix developed from an ad hoc database was subjected to cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling and principal components analysis, The resulting cocitation maps identified specific areas of r~search and their knowledge bases. We inferred the degree of consolidation of the discipline of library and information science, and of the subdisciplines informetrics, librarianship and university affiliation, from the research activities revealed. In this respect, the conclusions from the study show the existence of several research fronts in Spanish literature the contents of which are in most cases difficult to compare with those in other countries. A lesser degree of maturity of research in this field is shown. IntroductionMo~t researchers are familiar with the authors, specialties, and literature produced in their own field; however, the conceptual and methodological framework that makes it possible to objectively elucidate the structure of different fields of science has been available only since the 1960s. Analyses of these concepts and methods have been aimed at tracing the development of scientific activity and improving its efficiency. The first half of the 1960s saw the establishment of a nexus between the network of relations among scientific papers through references and citations, and the structure of specialities within a given field (Pricel). This relationship led to the development of concepts such as research fronts, invisible colleges, and science maps; current data representation techniques based on multivariate analysis for reducing the number of + To whom correspondence should be addressed.

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