Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Impact of Single-Authored Articles in Brazilian Journals of Information*

Abstract

This research aims to describe the scientific impact of single-authored articles published in Brazilian journals in information-related fields (Archival, Library Science, Information Science and Museology) between 2009 and 2017. This is a bibliometric study of a descriptive character, with an applied quantitative methodological approach. The ABCDM database, the Harzing’s Publish or Perish software and the Lattes Platform were used for data collection, which were then fed into and analyzed as Excel table and SPSS (t-test). From 1680 single-authored articles, 313 were randomly selected for study. Main results regarding the authorship were: 55.12% of authors had more single-authored articles than multiple-authored articles; 67.36% of the most cited articles were single-authored. Main results regarding the articles were: 35.10% of single-authored articles were the most frequently cited among an author’s entire body of work; in 49.67% of the cases, the average number of citations of single-authored articles exceeded the authors’ total average number of citations; in 50.00% of cases, the average number of citations of single-authored articles exceeded the average number of citations of multiple-authored articles. The average number of citations of single-authored articles exceeded the average number of citations of multiple-authored articles and of articles in general.