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Productivity, visibility, authorship, and collaboration in library and information science journals: Central and Eastern European authors

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Abstract

From the bibliometric point of view, little is known about the development and status of library and information science (LIS) in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Since these countries represent a part of the European Research Area in which the LIS field plays an important role, we aim to investigate the paradigm of their scientific communication. The research sample consists of papers (n = 3301) from authors with addresses from at least one of the 15 CEE countries (11 EU: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, and 4 EU potential candidate countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia) published in 160 LIS journals indexed in Scopus in the period 1996–2017. Analyses of productivity, citations, trends in authorship over time, and collaboration were made for the LIS field full sample and five LIS subfields: communication, computer science, information science, library science, and scientometrics. Additionally, we aimed to investigate scientific communication pattern between domestic (CEE) journals, international (non-CEE) journals and the journal Scientometrics. Our results show interesting data spanning 21 years including the transition period of the CEE countries.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under the Project IP-09-2014-9351.

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  1. Institute of Social Research in Zagreb, Amruševa 11, 10 000, Zagreb, Croatia

    Maja Jokić

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  1. Maja Jokić
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Correspondence to Maja Jokić.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Description of data preparing process for the project database

If the obtained dataset was used as the sample for bibliometric analysis, without any additional checks and cleaning, the results of the analysis would certainly be different. First, Scopus, as well as WoS, provide a classification system at the level of journals, and both allow journals to have multidisciplinary classifications (Wang and Waltman 2016). Second, there is the problem of the diversity of classification systems of science, specifically the social sciences. By comparing Scopus ASJC (All Science Journal Classification) list of Social Sciences with the modified OECD Frascati Field of Science (FOS) Social Sciences (https://www.oecd.org/science/inno/38235147.pdf) revealed significant differences. In the case of Scopus, these differences are related to the involvement of several fields of the humanities and some fields dominated by issues of technology and engineering, which, due to differences in scientific communication, could have a significant impact on the results. Within the obtained sample, an example of a drastic impact on our results in social sciences analysis was the finding of inclusion journals and papers that deal almost exclusively with the issues of natural sciences or biomedicine (Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, etc.). By checking each paper, we have excluded the possibility that such papers that dealt with the issues of natural sciences or biomedicine, were misclassified as to social sciences. Papers published in such journals represented a share of 2%, but they accounted for 36% of the total number of citations (Lazić et al. 2017). Additionally, almost all of those papers were multi-authored, with more than n authors per paper, which is uncommon in social sciences. This confirms Wang’s and Waltman’s (2016) thesis that journal classification systems play an essential role in the accuracy of bibliometric analyses. An additional reason to check the reliability of the obtained search results is that Scopus has an unreliable classification of documents per document type, i.e., article or review. Moreover, Scopus sometimes classifies documents with one or two pages, without references or abstract, in the document type category “article or review”. Also, conference proceedings are sometimes classified as peer review journals under the category source type “journal”.

To solve the problem with sample unreliability, we have chosen an expert-based approach. Namely, the project subject experts in each social science fields (sociology, political science, psychology, educational science, law, economics and library and information science) examined each of the 4896 journals that were initially obtained from Scopus. Subject experts classified journals based on their journal knowledge and journal title (usually, journal titles are indicative). Questionable journals which could not be classified in specific fields were analyzed in detail through journal or publisher webpage, and decision were subjected to a consensus. A thorough expert checks-up yielded in a final dataset containing 2724 journals with 58,512 bibliographic records categorized in social sciences ten subject categories according to modified OECD Frascati Fields of Science (FOS): economics and business, educational science, information and library science, law, political science, psychology, sociology, and three multidisciplinary fields (social sciences, social sciences and humanities, and social sciences and other fields). The modified OECD classification was applied due to the fact that it is widely used by CEE countries.

Appendix 2: List of journals by five LIS subfields

LIS subfield

Journal title

Number of papers

Communication

Catalan Journal of Communication and Cultural Studies

2

Chinese Journal of Communication

1

Communication Monographs

1

Communications

7

Comunicacion y Sociedad

1

Comunicar

7

Convergence

7

Emerging Communication: Studies in New Technologies and Practices in Communication

1

Feminist Media Studies

5

Global Media Journal

1

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

1

Informing Science

10

International Communication Gazette

2

International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication

4

International Journal of Communication

25

International Journal of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting

11

International Journal of Web Based Communities

7

Javnost

89

JMM International Journal on Media Management

1

Journal of Communication

2

Journal of Communication Management

4

Journalism

9

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

1

Journalism Studies

9

Media International Australia

2

Medijska Istrazivanja

58

New Review of Film and Television Studies

4

Nordicom Review

3

Northern Lights

2

Observatorio

3

Radio Journal

2

Review of Communication

1

Computer science

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology

49

Industrial Management and Data Systems

61

Information Sciences

431

Information Systems Journal

1

Journal of Cheminformatics

43

Journal of Computer Information Systems

16

Journal of Organizational and End User Computing

1

Journal of Strategic Information Systems

3

Progress in Informatics

3

Information science

Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives

10

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science

1

Common Knowledge

1

Computers and the Humanities

3

Cybermetrics

1

Data and Knowledge Engineering

8

European Science Editing

3

First Monday

9

Gazette

1

Global Media and Communication

2

IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

79

IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

92

Informacios Tarsadalom

106

Information

6

Information and Management

5

Information Development

9

Information Processing and Management

34

Information Research

33

Information Retrieval

5

Information Society

12

Information-Wissenschaft und Praxis

4

Informatologia

244

Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, and Management

16

International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems

9

International Journal of Information and Management Sciences

6

International Journal of Information Management

28

International Journal of Information Processing and Management

1

International Journal of Information System Modeling and Design

2

International Journal of Information Technology and Management

1

International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies

3

International Journal of Organizational Diversity

3

International Journal of the Inclusive Museum

7

Journal of Digital Information

2

Journal of Digital Information Management

14

Journal of Documentation

28

Journal of Global Information Management

3

Journal of Information and Knowledge Management

8

Journal of Information and Organizational Sciences

135

Journal of Information Science

19

Journal of Information Science and Engineering

5

Journal of Information Technology

1

Journal of Information Technology Education:Research

1

Journal of Knowledge Management

14

Journal of Network and Systems Management

7

Journal of Research and Practice in Information Technology

4

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

18

Knowledge and Process Management

2

Knowledge Management

3

Knowledge Management and E-Learning

6

Knowledge Management Research and Practice

15

Knowledge Organization

14

Knowledge-Based Systems

96

Learned Publishing

14

Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences

116

Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science

8

Museum Management and Curatorship

5

New Media and Society

10

New Review of Information Networking

3

Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy

1

Online Information Review

12

Proceedings of the ASIS Annual Meeting

1

Proceedings of the ASIST Annual Meeting

1

Proceedings of the European Conference on Knowledge Management, ECKM

63

Profesional de la Informacion

5

Prometheus

3

Publishing Research Quarterly

10

Research Evaluation

11

Science and Technology Studies

1

Webology

6

Library science

Archival Science

3

Bilgi Dunyasi

1

Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester

1

Cataloging and Classification Quarterly

22

Collection Building

3

D-Lib Magazine

7

Electronic Library

26

European Journal of Communication

26

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

1

Grey Journal

30

IFLA Journal

4

Information Technology and Libraries

4

Interlending and Document Supply

4

International Information and Library Review

6

International Journal of Lexicography

20

International Journal of the Book

4

International Journal on Digital Libraries

8

Journal of Academic Librarianship

11

Journal of Archival Organization

1

Journal of Classification

10

Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery and Electronic Reserve

2

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science

9

Journal of the Medical Library Association

2

Journal of the Society of Archivists

1

LIBER Quarterly

17

Library and Information Science Research

6

Library Collections, Acquisition and Technical Services

3

Library Hi Tech

11

Library Hi Tech News

2

Library Journal

1

Library Leadership and Management

1

Library Management

19

Library Philosophy and Practice

2

Library Resources and Technical Services

2

Library Review

15

Library Trends

19

Libres

1

Libri

19

New Library World

29

OCLC Systems and Services

4

Portal

2

Program

27

Reference and User Services Quarterly

1

Science and Technology Libraries

1

Serials Librarian

1

Slavic and East European Information Resources

19

VINE

2

Vjesnik Bibliotekara Hrvatske

273

Scientometrics

Journal of Informetrics

43

Scientometrics

275

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Jokić, M. Productivity, visibility, authorship, and collaboration in library and information science journals: Central and Eastern European authors. Scientometrics 122, 1189–1219 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03308-4

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