A bibliometric study of library and information research in China

Abstract

This paper, which is modeled on the studies done by Jarvelin and Vakkari in 1990 and 1993, is a content analysis of library and information science (LIS) research in China from 1979 to 1994. The aim is to study how research articles were distributed over various topics, what research methods were applied, and what the similarities and differences between LIS research in China and in the world are . The study samples comprise 1930, 2447, and 2665 articles published in the core LIS journals respectively in 1985, 1990 and 1994. The largest groups of articles from each year concerned the basic theory of LIS (26%-32%) and information service (20%-25%). The most popular research strategies were historical method (25%-19%) and not applicable (16%-14%), whereas the least popular were experiments (0.2%-0.5%) and survey method (4%-1.6%). The main difference is that LIS research in China trended towards theoretical research, but in the world towards applied research.

Author-supplied keywords

Cite this document ^(BETA)