Information science has grown and developed with the impacts of rapid changes in the information environment and the development of information technology controlling it, starting from the academic movement in the 1960s. With this academic growth, stu...
Information science has grown and developed with the impacts of rapid changes in the information environment and the development of information technology controlling it, starting from the academic movement in the 1960s. With this academic growth, studies in the field of information science, too, have dynamically been changed, and accordingly, various studies to understand the level and characteristics of the studies in information science have been conducted. However, as most of them used a descriptive analysis as the main analysis method, there is a limitation in analyzing the knowledge structure through the relationship between studies.
Therefore, this study understood the overall cyclical process of the production, distribution and consumption of knowledge in domestic and international information science, centering around the interactive relationships among researchers, research activities and research knowledge in order to overcome this limitation and based on this, it compared and analyzed the knowledge structure of domestic and international information science and draw implications.
For this purpose, this study conducted a statistical analysis and a network analysis of the relationships among co-author, citation and keyword with academic articles published in the representative domestic and international information science journals, JKOSIM and JASIST between 2010 and 2014. In other words, in order to understand the knowledge structure of domestic and international information science, an analysis of research productivity and co-author network of the production of knowledge, an analysis of knowledge flow speed and citation network of the propagation of knowledge and an analysis of the keyword network of knowledge structure were conducted.
Also, the research results derived from this analysis process are summarized as follows: First of all, an analysis of research productivity and co-author network would be conducted on the production of knowledge in domestic and international information science, and the analysis results would be summarized.
First, it was found that, in both domestic information science and international information science, the researchers’ research activities have been conducted more cooperatively after 2010. However, in the international information science, co-authored studies were more actively carried out than in the domestic information science, and the trend of joint research was rapidly changing, as well.
Second, the co-author network of domestic and international information science consisted of a large number of sub-groups characterized by cooperative groups with an overlapping connection line, and it was found that joint studies among researchers in these sub-groups take place very frequently took place. However, in the results of an analysis of the relation of the connection between authors in a sub-group, in domestic information science, cooperation often occurs with the authors of the same institution or an institution in the same region, while in international information science, like the domestic case, joint studies often occurred with the authors in the same institution, and in addition, studies were actively conducted in the form of international cooperative studies.
In addition, the results of an analysis of the knowledge flow speed, frequency, and citation network of the propagation of knowledge in domestic and international information science are drawn as follows.
First, knowledge in domestic and international information science is cited on average one year later for the first time and the propagation of knowledge is formed. In knowledge flow frequency, too, according to the researcher's popularity or impact factor, a small number of articles were cited, and the authors were cited much while the majority of the articles and authors were not cited much. In other words, the knowledge flow frequency followed the distribution of the power function.
However, while academic information and knowledge of the domestic information science were transferred and spread faster among the researchers, the academic knowledge of the international information science was concentrated in a few researchers.
Second, in the citation network of domestic and international information science, it was commonly noted that the characteristic of a small world where the network lines were organically connected was found. This means that academic knowledge was transferred and spreading fast through the organically connected interactions among the researchers of domestic and international information science. In addition, through an analysis of three types of the centrality of the network, it was found that knowledge in domestic and international information science was propagated and spread centering around a small number of researchers, and authors who played various roles simultaneously could be found.
Lastly, a keyword frequency analysis and a keyword network analysis on the structure of knowledge in domestic and international information science were conducted, and the results drawn are as follows:
First, in a keyword frequency analysis to understand the thematic characteristics of domestic and international information science, both the domestic and international information science showed the same aspect as the types of the existing research topics. It was found that, in the domestic information science, overall, studies in the field of Library & Information Science related to the library such as information service, informetrics and information use were actively conducted. In contrast, in the international information science, interdisciplinary studies were actively conducted, like computer-related information science from theoretical and technical aspects, such as informetrics, information retrieval, and information use.
Second, the keyword network in the domestic and international information science showed characteristics of a small world, in which concepts and terms in the field of information science are closely related to each other. This fact means that the main research subjects of the domestic and international information science, which are changing according to rapid information environment, are studied organically, rather than existing isolated from each other. In addition, it was found that the main keywords extracted through a degree centrality analysis were similar to the results of the keyword frequency analysis. In other words, in the domestic information science, while studies of user-centric information service and users are continuously conducted, the field of informetrics related to the network analysis was emerging as a new high-rank topic. In the international information science, too, while the representative research topic studies of informetrics and information retrieval are constantly and actively conducted, it was found that social network-related research, too, was emerging as a high-rank topic, newly.
To sum up the above results, it is found that there are similar production, propagation, and structure of knowledge in the domestic and international information science. However, it is noted that the domestic researchers in the information science of information science do research activities within a small scale group connected to the same institution, rather than doing research activities through various relationships. Therefore, for the domestic creation and production of a variety knowledge in the information science of information science in the future, it seems that research in cooperation with researchers of various institutions would be necessary, and it would be necessary to actively conduct an interdisciplinary study positively accepting academic knowledge in other major information sciences, for the interdisciplinary characteristics of information science absolutely affected by information environment and information technology.
Lastly, this study has a significance that it structured knowledge in an interactive relational perspective in each process of the production, propagation and change of knowledge in the information science of information science, beyond a simple quantitative analysis and compared and analyzed the domestic and international knowledge systems in the field of information science, based on this.