Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The scientific production of Ibero-American authors on information literacy (1985–2013)

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The objective of this study was to make a current diagnosis of the scientific production of Ibero-American researchers on information literacy and information competences during the last four decades. The literature output on information literacy was examined using the techniques of bibliometric analysis and information visualization. The literature considered was that constituted by the articles included in the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), Scopus (Elsevier), Library and Information Science Abstracts, and Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts databases. The occurrence of descriptors was analysed using VOSViewer, a program that groups them into clusters and generates a map of their connections. The results showed exponential growth of some 30 % annually between 2005 and 2011, with a mean of 14.45 documents per year. Spain, with 119 documents, was the top producing country, followed by Brazil with 76. The distribution of the more than 500 authors fitted a Lotka-law pattern, and the distribution of the 105 journals fitted the three zones of a Bradford-law pattern. The visualization map showed the 62 descriptors to group into seven clusters. For its centrality, there stood out “Information literacy”, strongly related with “Information Science”. At the edge of the map were “Digital literacy” and “School library”, indicative of their lack of any strong relationship with other terms. The “Education”, “Knowledge management”, “Universities & colleges”, and “University libraries” descriptors were linked closely with the main IL theme.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Denomination used in the 22 Ibero-American countries to denote both Information Literacy and Information Competences: http://alfiniberoamerica.wikispaces.com/.

References

  • Basili, C. (2003). Information Literacy in Europe: a first insight into the state of the art of information literacy in the European Union. Roma: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.

    Google Scholar 

  • Basili, C. (2004). EnIL survey. Roma: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. http://enil.ceris.cnr.it/Basili/EnIL/. Accessed 21 June 2013.

  • Basili, C. (2009). The observatory on information literacy policies and research in Europe (p. 413). Roma: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benito Morales, F. (1995). Del dominio de la información a la mejora de la inteligencia. Diseño, aplicación y evaluación del programa HEBORI (habilidades y estrategias para buscar, organizar y razonar la información). PhD Thesis. Información y Documentación. Universidad de Murcia.

  • Bernal Cruz, F. J. (1985). La extensión tecnológica del conocimiento. (Pedagogía de la Información). Cited by: Gómez Hernández, J. A. (1996). La aportación de Francisco Javier Bernal al mundo universitario, la educación y las bibliotecas. Educación y Biblioteca, 68.

  • Borgatti, S. P., Everett, M. G., & Freeman, L. C. (2002). Ucinet 6 for Windows Software for social network analysis. Harvard: Analytic Technologies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradford, B. C. (1934). Sources of information on specific subjects. Engineering, 23(3), 85–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradford, B. C. (1948). Documentation. London: Crosby, Lockwood Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Correia, A. M. R. (2013). Lists of selected information literacy resources: Portuguese Language (Portugal). In F. W Horton (Ed.), Overview of information literacy resources worldwide. París: UNESCO. http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/news/overview_info_lit_resources.pdf. Accessed 15 Feb 2013.

  • Crawford, J., de Vicente, A., & Clink, S. (2004). Use and awareness of electronic information services by students at Glasgow Caledonian University: A longitudinal study. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 36(3), 101–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Domínguez-Flores, N., & Wang, L. (2011). Online learning communities: Enhancing undergraduate students’ acquisition of information skills. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37(6), 495–503.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dudziak, E. A. (2003). Information literacy: Princípios, filosofia e prática. Ciência da Informação, 32(1), 23–35. doi:10.1590/S0100-19652003000100003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dudziak, E. A. (2008). Os faróis da sociedade de informação: uma análise crítica sobre a situação da competência em informação no Brasil. Informação & Sociedade: Estudos, 18(2), 41–53. http://bogliolo.eci.ufmg.br/downloads/DUDZIAK%20Os%20farois%20da%20SI.pdf. Accessed 25 Oct 2013.

  • Dudziak, E. A. (2010). Competência informacional: análise evolucionária das tendências da pesquisa e produtividade científica em âmbito mundial. Informação & Informação, 15(2), 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dudziak, E. A., & Ferreira, S. (2004). La alfabetización informacional para la ciudadanía en América Latina: el punto de vista del usuario final de programas nacionales de información y de inclusión digital. In World library and information congress: 70th IFLA general conference and council. Libraries: Tools for education and development. http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla70/papers/157s-Pinto.pdf. Accessed 25 Oct 2011.

  • Egghe, L. (1986). The dual of Bradford’s law. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 37(4), 246–255.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Egghe, L. (1990). Applications of the theory of Bradford’s law to the calculation of Leimkuhler’s law and to the completion of bibliographies. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 41(7), 469–492.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Egghe, L. (2012). Theoretical evidence for empirical findings of A. Pulgarin on Lotka’s law. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 17(3), 1–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Escalona, M. I., Lagar, M. P., & Pulgarín, A. (2010). Web of science vs. SCOPUS: Un estudio cuantitativo en Ingeniería Química. Anales de documentación: Revista de biblioteconomía y documentación, 13, 159–175.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferreira, S. (1995). Novos paradigmas da informação e novas percepções do usuário. Ciência da Informação, 25(2). http://revista.ibict.br/ciinf/index.php/ciinf/article/view/440/398. Accessed 25 Oct 2013.

  • Gómez Hernández, J. A. (1995). La función de la biblioteca en la educación Superior. Estudio aplicado a la Biblioteca Universitaria de Murcia. PhD Thesis. Información y Documentación. Universidad de Murcia. http://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/10907. Accessed 25 Oct 2013.

  • Gómez Hernández, J. A. (1996). La aportación de Francisco Javier Bernal al mundo universitario, la educación y las bibliotecas. Educación y Biblioteca, 68.

  • Gómez Hernández, J. A., & Pasadas Ureña, C. (2003). Information Literacy developments and issues in Spain. Library Review, 57(7), 340–348. doi:10.1108/00242530310487443.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grassian, E. S., & Kaplowitz, J. R. (2009). Information literacy instruction: Theory and practice (2nd ed.). Chicago: Neal-Schuman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lau, J. (2007). INFOLIT in Latin Ametica (Charter III). In Information literacy: An international state-of-the art report. UNESCO-IFLA. http://www.jesuslau.com/docs/publicaciones/doc2/UNESCO_state_of_the_art.pdf. Accessed 22 Apr 2014.

  • Lau, J., Chevillotte, S. F., Fidzani, B. T., Africa, S., Lau, J. M., Pinto, M., & Underwood, P. (2007). Information literacy: An international state-of-the art report. UNESCO-IFLA. http://www.jesuslau.com/docs/publicaciones/doc2/UNESCO_state_of_the_art.pdf. Accessed 22Apr 2014.

  • Lau, J. & Cortés, J. (1999). Information skills for life-long learning/Habilidades informativas para el aprendizaje de toda la vida. In 65th IFLA council and general conference, Bangkok, Thailand. http://bivir.uacj.mx/dhi/PublicacionesUACJ/Docs/Ponencias/PDF/ponif992.pdf. Accessed 22 Apr 2014.

  • Leimkuhler, F. F. (1967). The Bradford distribution. Journal of Documentation, 23, 197–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lotka, A. J. (1926). The frequency distribution of scientific productivity. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 16(12), 317–323.

    Google Scholar 

  • Machin-Mastromatteo, J. D., Lau, J., & Virkus, S. (2013). Participatory action research and information literacy: Revising an old new hope for research and practice. In S. Kurbanoglu, E. Grassian, D. Mizrachi, R. Catts, & S. Spiranec (Eds.), Worldwide commonalities and challenges in information literacy research and practice. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 397, 48–53. Berlin: Springer.

  • Machin-Mastromatteo, J. D., & Virkus, S. (2013). Doing online relearning through information skills (DORIS): A mutual shaping perspective for information literacy research and practice. In S. Kurbanoglu, E. Grassian, D. Mizrachi, R. Catts, S. Spiranec (Eds.), Worldwide commonalities and challenges in information literacy research and practice. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 397, 380–385. Berlin: Springer.

  • Martín-Sobrino, M. I., Pestaña-Caldes, A. I., & Pulgarín, A. (2008). Lotka law applied to the scientific production of information science area. Brazilian Journal of Information Science, 2(1), 16–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marzal, M. A., & Calzada Prado, J. (2007). 15 años de Alfabetización en Información: investigación internacional recogida en LISA, ERIC y SSCI entre 1990 y 2005. Boletín de la Asociación Andaluza de Bibliotecarios, 22(86–87), 15–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman, M. E. J., & Girvan, M. (2004). Finding and evaluating community structure in networks. Physical Review E, 69(2), 026113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pao, M. L. (1985). Lotka’s law: a testing procedure. Information Processing and Management, 21(4), 305–320.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pao, M. L. (1986). An empirical examination of Lotka’s law. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 37(1), 26–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinto, M., Cordon, J. A., & Gomez. R. (2010). Thirty years of information literacy (1977–2007): A terminological, conceptual and statistical analysis. JOLIS, 42(1).

  • Pinto, M., Escalona-Fernández, M. I., & Pulgarín, A. (2013). Information literacy in social sciences and health sciences: A bibliometric study (1974–2011). Scientometrics, 95(3), 1071–1094.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinto, M., Pulgarín, A., & Escalona-Fernández, M. I. (2014). Viewing information literacy concepts: A comparison of two branches of knowledge. Scientometrics, 98(3), 2311–2329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinto, M., & Uribe-Tirado, A. (2012). Las bibliotecas públicas híbridas en el marco de la Alfabetización Informacional. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, (monográfico). doi:10.3989/redc.2012.mono.980. Accessed 15 April 2014.

  • Pinto, M., Uribe-Tirado, A., Gómez Díaz, R., & Cordón, J. A. (2011). La producción científica internacional sobre competencias informacionales e informáticas: tendencias e interrelaciones. Información, Cultura y Sociedad, 25. http://ppct.caicyt.gov.ar/index.php/ics/article/view/646. Accessed 25 Apr 2014.

  • Pulgarín, A. (2012). Dependence of Lotka’s law parameters on the scientific area. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 17(1), 41–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rader, H. B. (1990). Bibliographic instruction or information literacy? College & Research Libraries News, 51(1), 18–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rader, H. B. (1993). From library orientation to information literacy: twenty years of hard work. In L. Shirato (Ed.), What is good instruction now? Library instruction for the 90s (pp. 25–28). Ann Arbor, MI: Pierian Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rader, H. B. (1999). The learning environment—then, now and later: 30 years of teaching information skills. Reference Services Review, 27(3), 219–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rader, H. B. (2002). Information literacy 1973–2002: A selected literature review bibliography. Library Trends, 3(1), 1–20.

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Silva, S. A., Charon, R., & Wyer, P. C. (2011). The marriage of evidence and narrative: Scientific nurturance within clinical practice. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 17(4), 585–593.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tavares, R. B., Hepworth, M., & de Souza-Costa, S. M. (2011). Investigating citizens’ information needs through participative research: A pilot study in Candangolândia, Brazil. Information Development, 27(2), 125–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Torras, M. C., & Saetre, T. P. (2009). Information literacy education: A process approach professionalising the pedagogical role of academic libraries (p. 112). Cambridge: Chandos Information Professional.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uribe-Tirado, A. (2010). La Alfabetización Informacional en Iberoamérica. Una aproximación a su pasado, presente y futuro desde el análisis de la literatura publicada y los recursos web. IBERSID: revista de sistemas de información y documentación. Universidad de Zaragoza, 2010, 165–176. http://www.ibersid.eu/ojs/index.php/ibersid/article/view/3807/3572. Accessed 25 Oct 2013.

  • Uribe-Tirado, A. (2012). La incorporación de ALFIN como servicio fundamental de las bibliotecas Iberoamericanas. Una mirada general desde la construcción de un mapa de geo-representación de contenidos. Monográfico sobre Alfabetización Informacional: “Veintitantas experiencias ALFIN y una canción esperanzada”. ALFARED. (Homenaje a la revista Educación y Bibliotecas). http://www.alfared.org/sites/www.alfared.org/files/u49/23-incorporacionALFIN.medell%C3%ADn.pdf. Accessed 11 Jan 2013.

  • Uribe-Tirado, A. (2013). Lecciones aprendidas en programas de alfabetización informacional en universidades de Iberoamérica. Tesis, Doctorado en Documentación Científica, Universidad de Granada. http://hdl.handle.net/10760/22416. Accessed 18 Jan 2014.

  • Uribe-Tirado, A., Campal García, M. F., & Calderón-Rehecho, A. (2013). Lists of selected information literacy resources: Spanish. In F. W. Horton (Ed.), Overview of information literacy resources worldwide. París: UNESCO. http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/news/overview_info_lit_resources.pdf. Accessed 15 Feb 2013.

  • Van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2007a). Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics, 84(2), 523–538.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2007b). VOS: a new method for visualizing similarities between objects. In H.-J. Lenz, R. Decker (Eds.), Advances in data analysis: Proceedings of the 30th annual conference of the German Classification Society (pp. 299–306). Berlín: Springer.

  • Van Eck, N. J., Waltman, L., Dekkler, R., & Van den Berg, J. (2010). A comparison of two techniques for bibliometric mapping: Multidimensional scaling and VOS. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(12), 2405–2416.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wyer, P. C., & Silva, S. A. (2009). Where is the wisdom? A conceptual history of evidence-based medicine. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 15(6), 891–898.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zylka, J., Muller, W., & Martins, S. W. (2011). Media literacy worldwide. Similarities and differences of theoretical and practical approaches. In IEEE global engineering education conference, EDUCON, pp. 726–733.

Download references

Acknowledgments

The present work formed part of the project EDU2011-29290 on Information Competences in the University, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain, to be conducted during the years 2011–2014.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Communication, Facultad de Comunicación y Documentación, University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja, 18071, Granada, Spain

    María Pinto

  2. Library, University of Extremadura, Avda. de la Universidad, 10003, Cáceres, Spain

    M. Isabel Escalona

  3. Department of Information and Communication, Facultad de Documentación y Comunicación, University of Extremadura, Plazuela Ibn Marwan, 06071, Badajoz, Spain

    Antonio Pulgarín

  4. Inter-American School of Information Science, University of Antioquia, A.A. 1226, Medellín, Colombia

    Alejandro Uribe-Tirado

Authors
  1. María Pinto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. M. Isabel Escalona
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Antonio Pulgarín
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Alejandro Uribe-Tirado
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to M. Isabel Escalona.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Pinto, M., Isabel Escalona, M., Pulgarín, A. et al. The scientific production of Ibero-American authors on information literacy (1985–2013). Scientometrics 102, 1555–1576 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1498-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1498-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation