The representation of ethics and knowledge organization in the WoS and LISTA databases

Abstract

A naïve user seeking introductory information on a topic may perceive a domain as it is shown by the search results in a database; however, inconsistencies in indexing can misrepresent the full picture of the domain by including irrelevant documents or omitting relevant ones, sometimes inexplicably. A bibliometric analysis was conducted on the domain of ethics in knowledge organization in the World of Science (WoS) and Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) databases to discern how it is being presented by search results in those databases and to attempt to determine why inconsistencies occurred.