Largest contribution to LIS by external disciplines as measured by the characteristics of research articles

Abstract

The paper analyses Library and Information Science (LIS) articles published in leading international LIS journals based on their authors’ disciplinary backgrounds. The study combines content analysis of articles with authors’ affiliation analysis. The main research question is: Are authors’ disciplinary backgrounds associated with choice of research topics and methods in LIS articles? The study employs a quantitative content analysis of articles published in 30 + scholarly LIS journals in 2015, focusing on research topics and methods. The articles are also assigned to three disciplinary categories based on authors’ affiliations: External (no authors from LIS institutions), Internal (all authors from LIS institutions), and Mixed (some authors from LIS institutions, some from outside). The association of articles’ disciplinary categories with article research topics and methods is analysed quantitatively. Most research contributions to LIS come from external articles (57%). However, LIS scholars have a clear majority in research on L&I services and institutions (68%), while external scholars dominate the contributions in Information retrieval (73%) and Scientific communication (Scientometrics, 69%). Internal articles tend to have an intermediary’s (29%) or end-user’s (22%) viewpoint on information dissemination while the external ones have developer’s viewpoint (27%) or no dissemination viewpoint (49%). Among research strategies, survey (29%) and concept analysis (23%) dominate internal articles, survey (28%) and citation analysis (19%) dominate mixed articles, and survey (20%) and citation analysis (19%) dominate external articles. The application profiles of research strategies varied somewhat between disciplinary categories and main topics. Consequently, the development of LIS in the areas of Information retrieval, Information seeking, and Scientific communication seems highly dependent on the contribution of other disciplines. As a small discipline, LIS may have difficulties in responding to the challenges of other disciplines interested in research questions in these three areas.

The association of disciplinary background with the evolution of topics and methods in Library and Information Science research 1995–2015

“…All longitudinal analyses and findings are new. To avoid unnecessary repetitive reporting, we refer the reader to the earlier publications (Järvelin & Vakkari, 2022;Vakkari et al, 2022aVakkari et al, , 2022b. Below we give a concise description of the content analytic methods and emphasize the longitudinal ones.…”

“…Despite the variation in the characteristics of data in studies reviewed, it seems that disciplines external to LIS are increasingly contributing to LIS, especially Computer Science and Business. Although most of the studies do not observe topics and methods, Vakkari et al (2022a, 2022b) show that the preferred research topics and methods vary according to authors' disciplinary background. Scholars representing LIS focus on traditional professional topics, LIS context, and L&S services, while Computer scientists on information retrieval and information seeking and Business scholars on information seeking and scientometrics.…”

“…Based on cross-sectional data from 2015, Vakkari et al (2022b) reported that traditional professional topics are cultivated mostly by LIS scholars, while other disciplines contributed most to IR, scientific communication, and information seeking. They conjectured that LIS is under fragmentation, with IR and scientometrics on the road toward integration with their external contributing disciplines.…”

“…There are several limitations in our study, many of which have been discussed in earlier articles using the dataset (e.g., Järvelin & Vakkari, 2022;Vakkari et al, 2022aVakkari et al, , 2022b.…”

“…In Library and Information Science (LIS for short), the share of authors with disciplinary background outside LIS has grown markedly (Chang, 2019;Chang & Huang, 2012;Lund, 2020;Urbano & Ardanuy, 2020;Vakkari et al, 2022aVakkari et al, , 2022b. For example, Chang (2019) found, based on 75 LIS journals, that non-LIS authors had the majority in about 70% of the journals.…”