Information literacy and research support services in academic libraries: A bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020

Abstract

This article attempted to examine research support services, information services, print collections, digital resources and information literacy using bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020. The main aim was to consolidate the published studies on the research support services in academic libraries in the Web of Science (WoS) indexed documents. However, there has been a lack of quantitative measurements on the subject. Thus, we used the bibliometric method and found a total of 4079 published documents. The study findings revealed that the topic of ‘information literacy and library’ was on top with a total number of 2168 publications, 3047 articles as a type of published documents, 3662 publications in English and a considerable increase in publications as per years were found. The top author named Fourie I was found with 106 citations and 22 articles started in 2001. Similarly, the University of Illinois found on top organisations out of 2609, United States on top out of 113 countries and information literacy as a keyword out of 6179. Furthermore, the Journal of Academic Librarianship placed at top of sources out of 726 and the National Institutes of Health NIH USA as a top funding agency.

Keywords

Bibliometric analysis digital resources information literacy information services print collections research support services

1. Introduction

The recent decades showed a rapidly changing pedagogy and research support services in academic libraries among researchers across the globe [1 –4]. Similarly, the hasty growth and utilisation of technological advancements further triggered demand for emerging support services from university libraries [5,6]. Presently, the use of modern support services has an important role to enhance the quality of libraries. These services include digitisation of print collections, open-access data, data management, information services, information literacy and services, open access of publishing access to the latest techniques of searching research material and bibliometric techniques [7 –9]. In response, universities tried their efforts to change research support in academic libraries as per the need of library users [10 –12]. For instance, academic libraries extended their services to users to provide research support to research scholars and students at their homes during COVID-19 pandemic [2,13]. It is pertinent to mention here that online support services in academic libraries were already available to the users in developed countries; however, it further strengthened the services. On the contrary, most of the developing nations struggled to transform their academic libraries to the online support services during the pandemic.

It has been observed that the academic activities have been shifter to an online teaching for the last 2 years. Therefore, academic libraries have also been transformed into online information services and digital resources along with information literacy to facilitate online academic activities [14 –17]. Furthermore, diversified research work was conducted on these research support services in developing and developed countries [7,18 –21]. These scholars and researchers used different research design and data analysis techniques to conclude their studies, including qualitative, quantitative, content analysis, observational research and bibliometric analysis [2,22 –24]. It is important to mention here that the term ‘bibliometrics’ was coined in 1969 and used in several studies to compile published documents across the globe [25 –27]. However, this method gained a lot of attention in the last decade through the important roles played in the field of library sciences discipline and evaluation of research, scientific publications and assessment through a quantitative approach on published documents the world over [25]. Owing to the importance of bibliometric technique, the present study aimed to evaluate research support services, information services, print collections, digital resources and information literacy using bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020. Thus, this study may provide insights to fill the gap in research in the field of library and information science.

1.1. Objectives of the study

We formulated the following objectives to evaluate research support services, information services, print collections, digital resources and information literacy using bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020:

To examine the published documents by their topics and document types,

To find out the published documents by their language and years,

To determine published documents by their top 20 results of authors’ information,

To determine the published documents by top 20 organisations and keywords,

To access the published documents by top 20 counties,

To scrutinise published documents by top 20 sources of publications, funding agencies and citations.

2. Review of literature

Historically, the academic libraries manually operated in academic institutions for a long time [28,29]. It was the time when the text was preserved manually in libraries. Researchers and scholars travelled long to study rarely available text to complete their research. However, with the steady transformation in technology, the academic libraries were converted into e-libraries to facilitate the researchers through the web of knowledge established across the developed world [30]. Due to the advancement of technology, all types of documents have been transformed and stored in online research webs by developed countries. Moreover, it was intended to facilitate the researchers and scholars to further achieve the milestones in academia [31 –33]. Thus, researchers found easy access to the research support services through academic libraries to the Web of Knowledge. In the past, the research support services in academic libraries have been a serious concern across the globe [7,34 –36], as several types of research have been conducted on research support services in developing and developed countries [9,18,37 –39]. The trend of research-on-research support services in developed countries has significance due to the use of modern technology that transformed academic libraries. Thus, a considerable scientific study has raised concerns on research support services that further enhanced the capacity of the academic libraries [40 –42]. Most of these studies revealed that academic libraries are providing and facilitating research support services to research scholars and academics [7,25,34,35].

As far as the bibliometric analysis technique is concerned, it has been extensively used by researchers to analyse scientific productivity in the field of library science and other linked disciplines [9,31,33,43 –46]. Through this method, researchers focused to analyse published documents, including books, letters, proceeding papers, book reviews, articles, abstracts and editorial materials used in scientific publications [41,47 –49]. Similar studies are conducted across the globe by analysing the frequency, quality and emergence of already existing research documents. The study by Ahmad et al. [38] was based on research in the Arab world from 1980 to 2020 using the bibliometric technique. Furthermore, the findings of Noor et al. [50] asserted that knowledge management was based on social media employing a bibliometric approach to analyse data. However, a recent study by Aristovnik et al. [51] pointed out science and social science response towards COVID-19 using the bibliometric study method. It is important to mention here that several researchers used the bibliometric analysis technique to clinch their study findings in the field of research support services in academic libraries the world over [7,52 –54]. These studies also include the findings of Su and Sun [55] on library users’ information, Schiuma et al. [56] on authorship pattern, Zeng et al. [57] on innovation efficiency and Bapte [58] on information literacy. Based on the review of literature, thus, this study aimed to evaluate scientific documents on research support services, information services, print collections, digital resources and information literacy using bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020. Therefore, we intended to evaluate the research support services, information services, print collections, digital resources and information literacy using bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020.

3. The data and methods

For the present study, we used the bibliometric analysis technique to conduct the present study. For bibliometric analysis, we extracted data from the Science Citation Index database, Web of Science (Core Collection). We used search query as TITLE: TS = (‘Research Support Services’ AND ‘Library’) OR TS = (‘Information Services’ AND ‘Library’) OR TS = (‘Print Collections’ AND ‘Library’) OR TS = (‘Digital Resources’ AND ‘Library’) OR TS = (‘Information Literacy’ AND ‘Library’) with a period of 2001 to 2020. With the help of these queries, a total of 4079 published documents were found and further analysis was employed. The indexes in the core collection of Web of Science were SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED and IC. The data were extracted on 5 February 2021 at 10:00 a.m. (GMT). We used Biblioshiny, VOSviewer and MS Excel software for bibliometric analysis. Furthermore, the data were presented in tables and figures to show the trend results and a conclusion was drawn. Furthermore, the analysis was performed by three authors equally and also contributed equally in all sections of this article.

4. Results and discussions

This section provides the results derived from bibliometric analysis of 2001–2020 on the topic of research support services in academic libraries. Furthermore, this section is divided into different sections based on the objectives of the study along with discussion.

4.1. Objective 1: To examine the published documents by their topics and document typesduring 2001–2020

Table 1 described the distribution of published documents by their topics and document types from 2001 to 2020. The first part (a) of the table was focused on the topic of the document. Data in the table revealed that 53.152% (out of 4079) of the published documents were on information literacy and the library. Similarly, 35.18% of the publications were on information services and libraries during 2001–2020. On the contrary, there was a smaller portion of published documents title on research support services & library (0.833%) and print collection & library (1.691%). It asserted that more than half (53.152%) of the published documents were on information literacy and library topic (see Table 1). Thus, information literacy and library was very important topic for authors and used as a topic for publication. The study findings were also supported by the findings of Bapte [58], Pinto et al. [59] and Tallolli and Mulla [60].

Table 1.

Distribution of published documents by their topics and document types (2001–2020).

	Total publications	%
(a) Topic of the documents (2001–2020)
Research Support Services AND Library	034	0.833
Information Services AND Library	1435	35.18
Print Collections AND Library	069	1.691
Digital Resources AND Library	373	9.144
Information Literacy AND Library	2168	53.152
Total	4079	100.00
(b) Type of the documents (2001–2020)
Article	3047	74.70
Proceedings Paper	590	14.47
Book Review	174	04.27
Review	173	04.24
Editorial Material	83	02.03
Meeting Abstract	07	00.18
Reprint	02	00.05
Biographical Item	01	00.02
Letter	01	00.02
News Item	01	00.02
Total	4079	100.00

The second part (b) of Table 1 highlighted the type of published documents during 2001–2020. There was 74.70% (out of 4079) of the published documents were in article form and 14.47% of documents were as proceedings papers during 2001–2020. Similarly, 4.24% of the documents were published as a review and only 0.02% of them were named as a letter. Furthermore, a similar proportion of published documents were reported as the bibliographical item (0.02%) and news item (0.02%). It is pertinent to mention here that 8.68 documents were published in a year on average and 5.652 citations per document in each year. Moreover, the total references used in 4079 published documents were 74,715. Based on the data, it was concluded that more than half of the published documents were published as an article (see Table 1). Hence, the article as a document was very important for authors and published during 2001–2020. Furthermore, the study findings were also lined up with the findings of Shonhe [61] and Goksu et al. [36].

4.2. Objective 2: To find out the published documents by their language and years during 2001–2020

Table 2 described the distribution of published documents by their language and year of publication from 2001 to 2020. The first part (a) of the table was focused on the language of the document. Data in the table revealed that 89.777% of the documents were published in the English language and 3.089% of the publications were published in the Spanish language during 2001–2020. On the contrary, there was a smaller portion of published documents in the language of Chinese (0.735%), German (1.348%) and French (0.368%). However, a similar proportion of published documents were reported in Afrikaans and Catalan language as 0.025%. Furthermore, documents published in the language of Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian were also reported as parallel proportions, that is, 0.072. Nonetheless, among the top 20 languages of published documents, there was a similar and smaller proportion of Czech, Latvian and Ukrainian reported as 0.025%. It asserted that the majority (89.777%) of the published documents were published in the English language during 2001–2020. Thus, the English language was very important for authors and used as a language of published documents. It is pertinent to mention here that the English language is an international language (see Table 2). Thus, the authors selected this language for a wider readership for their research documents. The study findings were also supported by the findings of Raffaghelli and Stewart [34], Kuzhabekova [25] and Sahu and Parabhoi [47].

Table 2.

Distribution of published documents by their language and years (2001–2020).

(a) Published documents by their language (2001–2020)
Languages	TP	%	Languages	TP	%
English	3662	89.777	Croatian	06	0.147
Spanish	126	3.089	Polish	03	0.074
Russian	73	1.79	Arabic	02	0.049
Portuguese	56	1.373	Hungarian	02	0.049
German	55	1.348	Afrikaans	01	0.025
Chinese	30	0.735	Catalan	01	0.025
Italian	16	0.392	Czech	01	0.025
French	15	0.368	Latvian	01	0.025
Japanese	15	0.368	Ukrainian	01	0.025
Turkish	12	0.294	Unspecified	01	0.025
(b) Published documents by their years (2001–2020)
Years	Publications	%	Years	Publications	%
2001	46	1.128	2011	239	5.859
2002	60	1.471	2012	255	6.252
2003	66	1.618	2013	263	6.448
2004	86	2.108	2014	250	6.129
2005	155	03.80	2015	294	7.208
2006	184	4.511	2016	293	7.183
2007	198	4.854	2017	288	7.061
2008	209	5.124	2018	290	7.110
2009	240	5.884	2019	232	5.688
2010	221	5.418	2020	210	5.148

TP = Total Publication.

The second part (b) of the table was focused on the distribution of publications by their years. Data in the table revealed that 5.148% of the documents were published in 2020 and 5.688% of the publications were published in 2019. On the contrary, there was a higher portion of published documents in the year 2018 (7.11%), 2017 (7.061%), 2016 (7.183%) and 2015 (7.208%). However, a smaller proportion of published documents was also reported in the years 2003 (1.618%) and 2002 (1.471%). However, a different proportion of published documents was reported in 2001 (1.128%) and 2004 (2.108%). It affirmed that a higher number of documents (294 in numbers) were published in 2015 compared with other years (see Table 2). The study findings were also supported by the findings of Karisiddappa et al. [41] and Morrisey [62].

4.3. Objective 3: To chalk out published documents by their top 20 results of authors’ information during 2001–2020

Data in Table 3 described the distribution of published documents by their top 20 results out of a total of 6503 authors’ information from 2001 to 2020. It is pertinent to mention here that single-authored documents were 1532 and multi-authored documents were found as 4971 in numbers. Data in the table revealed that the top author name was Fourie I having an h-index of 5, g-index of 9, m-index of 0.238, total citations 106, with 22 publications starting from 2001. Similarly, Joint N had 20 publications with 70 citations, Johnson AM had 16 publications with 82 citations and Pinto M had only 15 publications with 154 citations starting from 2007. Conversely, the author named Marzal MA also appeared in the top 200 authors with eight publications and 78 citations starting from 2009. It stated that an author named Fourie I was at top of the authors’ information list with 22 publications and 106 citations (see Table 3). The study findings were also supported by the findings of Schiuma et al. [56] and Tomaszewski [63].

Table 3.

Distribution of published documents by their top 20 results of authors’ information (2001–2020).

Author	h_index	g_index	m_index	TC	TP	PY_Start
Fourie I	5	9	0.238	106	22	2001
Joint N	5	7	0.263	70	20	2003
Johnson AM	5	8	0.294	82	16	2005
Pinto M	8	12		154	15	2007
Urquhart C	7	12	0.333	201	12	2001
Detmering R	4	7	0.333	56	10	2010
Hart G	5	7	0.313	61	10	2006
Saarti J	3	3	0.273	15	10	2011
Ameen K	3	5	0.375	32	9	2014
Bruce C	4	5	0.308	33	9	2009
Chiu DKW	4	8		65	9	2015
Julien H	6	9	0.300	171	9	2002
Baro EE	6	8	0.462	77	8	2009
Bawden D	5	8	0.238	380	8	2001
Corrall S	5	8	0.333	107	8	2007
Koltay T	6	8	0.400	83	8	2007
Kostagiolas PA	5	8	0.357	79	8	2008
Lo P	4	8	0.500	72	8	2014
Mahmood K	4	8	0.235	94	8	2005
Marzal MA	3	8	0.231	78	8	2009

TC = Total Citations, TP = Total Publication.

4.4. Objective 4: To determine the published documents by top 20 organisations and keywords during2001–2020

Statistics in the Table 4 revealed the top 20 names out of 2676 organisations and keywords based on published documents during 2001–2020. The first part (a) of the table was based on the top 20 organisations. Data indicated that the University of Illinois was at the top of the list with 50 number of published documents (with 251 citations). In second place, the University of Strathclyde was standing with 34 publications from 2001 to 2020. Furthermore, the CUNY, University of North Carolina and the University of Sheffield had the same number of publications, that is, 27 in number. On the contrary, the University of Michigan was at the bottom of the top 20 organisational published documents from 2001 to 2020 (see Table 4 & Figure 1). It is important to mention here that several studies reported top organisations based on published documents [10,64 –66].

Table 4.

Distribution of published documents by top 20 organisations and keywords (2001–2020).

(a) List of publications by top 20 organisations (2001–2020)
Organisation	TP	TC	TLS	Organisation	TP	TC	TLS
Univ. Illinois	50	251	3829	Univ. Alberta	23	360	2453
Univ. Strathclyde	34	159	461	Univ. Punjab	23	145	1423
Univ. Pretoria	30	119	1767	McGill Univ.	22	176	1689
CUNY	27	179	2488	Univ. South Africa	22	48	1283
Univ. N Carolina	27	202	1578	Univ. Granada	21	172	4246
Univ. Sheffield	27	208	1945	Univ. Colorado	20	166	2254
Rutgers State Univ.	26	134	2024	Washington State Univ.	20	260	1489
Nanyang Tech. Univ.	24	222	2254	Univ. Calif Los Angeles	19	185	1121
Queensland Univ. Technology	24	110	3082	Univ. Hong Kong	19	108	3346
Univ. Louisville	24	202	2405	Univ. Michigan	19	281	2323
(b) Distribution of published documents by top 20 keywords (2001–2020)
Keywords		f	TLS	Keyword		f	TLS
Information Literacy		1177	2660	University Libraries		124	338
Academic Libraries		428	1191	Internet		123	373
Information Services		420	835	Skills		121	484
Libraries		282	651	Digital Libraries		118	221
Library Instruction		265	813	Librarians		115	346
Library		260	641	Public Libraries		114	212
Students		207	740	Higher Education		102	324
Education		157	560	Literacy		99	319
Instruction		140	480	Assessment		96	316
Information		131	399	Impact		94	366

TP = Total Publication, TLS = Total Link Strength.

Figure 1.

Published documents by top productive organisations (2001–2020).

The second part (b) of Table 4 presented the top 20 keywords used in the published documents during 2001–2020. Data in the table pointed out that information literacy were on the top of the top 20 keywords with a total number of 1177 and academic libraries placed at second number with a total number of 428 as occurrence. Similarly, information services were used as keywords 420 times and libraries as 282 times in the published documents from 2001 to 2020. Furthermore, students, education, instruction, information, university libraries, the Internet, skills, digital libraries, librarians, public libraries, higher education and literacy were also used as the top 20 keywords in the published document in the said period of publication. However, assessment and impact were used as lowest as a keyword in the top 20 keywords in published documents in 20 years. It is important to mention here that the total keywords were 1414 in the number and 6179 total authors’ keywords used in the published documents. The keywords as information literacy and academic libraries were on the top of the list of top 20 keywords (see Table 4 & Figure 2). The study findings are aligned with the findings calculated keywords in the published documents such as Ajibade and Mutula [49], Huang et al. [26] and Tallolli and Mulla [60].

Figure 2.

Published documents by top 20 keywords (2001–2020).

4.5. Objective 5: To access the published documents by the top 20 countries during 2001–2020

Data indicated in Table 5 showed a list of publications by the top 20 countries from 2001 to 2020. Data in the table revealed that 0.387378% of the documents were published in the United States (out of 113 countries) and 0.080298% of the publications out of 4079 were published in China during 2001–2020. On the contrary, there were a different proportion of published documents in the United Kingdom (0.078502%), Brazil (0.016419%) and Canada (0.043612%). However, a similar proportion of published documents were reported in New Zealand and Finland as 0.007183%. Furthermore, documents published in Australia (0.035146%), South Africa (0.033350%), Russia (0.020267%) and Ireland (0.008722%) were also reported in the top 20 countries. Nonetheless, among the top 20 languages of published documents, there was a smaller proportion of Pakistan, that is, 0.007696% out of 4079 documents. It asserted that the United States was on top of 20 countries based on published documents from 2001 to 2020, as the United States is English-speaking country and used English as a language of published documents. It is pertinent to mention here that the English language is an international language and the United States was on top of 20 countries based on publications on the subject underhand (see Table 5 & Figure 3). Thus, the authors selected their language for a wider readership for their research documents. The study findings were also supported by the findings of Abernethy and Holderied [67], Tallolli and Mulla [60] and Morrisey [62].

Table 5.

Distribution of published documents by top 20 counties (2001–2020).

List of publications by top 20 counties (2001–2020)
Country	TP	Freq	SCP	MCP	MCP_Ratio
USA	1510	0.387378	1471	39	0.0258
China	313	0.080298	291	22	0.0703
United Kingdom	306	0.078502	288	18	0.0588
Canada	170	0.043612	162	8	0.0471
Australia	137	0.035146	127	10	0.0730
South Africa	130	0.033350	118	12	0.0923
India	97	0.024885	96	1	0.0103
Spain	95	0.024371	86	9	0.0947
Russia	79	0.020267	78	1	0.0127
Germany	73	0.018728	69	4	0.0548
Nigeria	64	0.016419	60	4	0.0625
Brazil	52	0.013340	50	2	0.0385
Ireland	34	0.008722	32	2	0.0588
Iran	32	0.008209	30	2	0.0625
Italy	32	0.008209	31	1	0.0312
Mexico	32	0.008209	32	0	0.0000
Greece	31	0.007953	26	5	0.1613
Pakistan	30	0.007696	24	6	0.2000
Finland	28	0.007183	24	4	0.1429
New Zealand	28	0.007183	27	1	0.0357

TP = Total Publication.

Figure 3.

Published documents by top counties (2001–2020).

4.6. Objective 6: To scrutinise published documents by top 20 sources of publications, funding agencies and citations during 2001–2020

Regarding sources of publications, Journal of Academic Librarianship placed at top of sources out of 726 with h-index of 21, g-index of 35, m-index of 1, total citations of 1861, total publications 166 and publication year starting from 2001. Furthermore, College & Research Libraries was placed at second number with h-index of 20, g-index of 31, total citations of 1230, total publications 82 and publication year starting from 2001. However, Information Systems was placed at bottom of sources of top 20 published documents during 2001 to 2020 with h-index of 10, g-index of 18, m-index of 0.476190476, total citations of 377, total publications of 47 and publication year starting from 2001. It is pertinent to mention here that the Journal of Academic Librarianship was placed at the top and Information Systems placed at bottom of the top 20 sources of published documents (see Figure 4, Appendix 1, Table 6). The study findings are aligned with the findings of several researchers’ analysed top sources of published documents [7,68].

Figure 4.

Published documents by top 20 sources of publications (2001–2020).

Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health NIH USA and United States Department of Health Human Services (0.466% out of 2676) were in the top list of published documents by the top 20 funding agencies during 2001–2020. Similarly, NIH National Library of Medicine NLM was placed at the third position with 0.319% of 2797 in published documents. On the contrary, the New Jersey Chapter MLA and Hospital Libraries Section Medical Library Association MLA New York with the same proportion (0.049% out of 4079) were placed at bottom of the top 20 funding agencies/organisations of published documents from 2001 to 2020 (see Appendix 2, Table 7). Regarding the top 20 articles with citations, an article titled, ‘Information and Digital Literacies: A Review of Concepts’ (written by Bawden D in 2001, ISSN-0022-0418, Vol./No. 57(2)) with total citations of 335 was listed at top of the list during 2001–2020. Conversely, an article titled, ‘A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century’ (written by Lewis DW in 2007, ISSN-0010-0870, Vol./No. 68(5)) with total citations of 82 was placed at the bottom of the top 20 published documents during the said period (see Appendix 3, Table 8).

5. Conclusion

Based on the bibliometric analysis, we concluded that this method enabled researchers to gain more in-depth insights into the selected topic and support to recognise variables that were used during research in the research support services in academic libraries. It has been shown the growing importance of publishing metrics in hiring/promotion decisions in the article. Faculty personnel committee and university upper administration are increasingly taking into consideration metrics such as journal impact factor, h-index, citation analysis and journal acceptance rates. The study was mainly based to examine research support services, information services, print collections, digital resources and information literacy–oriented published documents indexed in Web of Science from 2001 to 2020. It concluded that the topic of ‘information literacy and library’ was on top with a total number of 4079 publications in the form of articles in the English language from the United States. Furthermore, the top author’s name was Fourie I and the University of Illinois was the top organisation. The keyword ‘information literacy’ was highly used, the top publications were in the Journal of Academic Librarianship and the National Institutes of Health NIH USA was the top funding agency. It is recommended that further bibliometric studies may be conducted from other databases and using other students’ academic performance in higher education–related topics.

6. Limitations of the study

The present bibliometric study was based on publications in the Web of Science only and we did not use other databases agencies. Furthermore, it only focussed to examine research support services, information services, print collection, digital resources and information literacy using bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020. Thus, we did not use other related topics, including interlibrary loans, document delivery services, computer labs and professional staff.

Footnotes

Appendix 1

Table 6.

Distribution of published documents by top 20 sources of publications (2001–2020).

Sources	h_index	g_index	m_index	TC	TP	PY_Start
Journal of Academic Librarianship	21	35	1	1861	166	2001
College & Research Libraries	20	31	0.952380952	1230	82	2001
Reference Services Review	18	23		1675	253	2005
Portal-Libraries and the Academy	16	25	0.761904762	841	73	2001
Electronic Library	15	20	0.714285714	825	123	2001
Journal of Documentation	15	29	0.714285714	885	54	2001
Library Management	14	18		601	114	2005
Journal of the Medical Library Association	14	20	0.7	540	50	2002
Library Hi Tech	13	21		638	74	2006
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science	13	19		486	62	2001
Library Trends	13	25	0.619047619	669	49	2001
Library Review	12	16	0.705882353	587	119	2005
College & Undergraduate Libraries	12	15		531	98	2006
New Library World	12	16	0.705882353	499	89	2005
Health Information & Libraries Journal	11	15		399	70	2005
Journal of Library Administration	11	15	0.647058824	437	69	2005
Information Research: An International Electronic Journal	11	22	0.578947368	498	37	2003
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology	11	12	0.523809524	602	12	2001
Communications in Information Literacy	10	16	0.714285714	425	69	2008
Program Electronic Library & Information Systems	10	18	0.476190476	377	47	2001

TC = Total Citations, TP = Total Publications, PY = Publication Year.

Appendix 2

Table 7.

Distribution of published documents by top 20 funding agencies (2001–2020).

Funding agencies	TP	% of 4079
National Institutes of Health NIH USA	19	0.466
United States Department of Health Human Services	19	0.466
NIH National Library of Medicine NLM	13	0.319
National Natural Science Foundation of China NSFC	09	0.221
National Science Foundation NSF	09	0.221
NSF Directorate for Computer Information Science Engineering CISE	05	0.123
Faculty Research Fund Faculty of Education The University of Hong Kong	03	0.074
Haworth Document Delivery Service	03	0.074
IFLA Section on Statistics Durham UK	03	0.074
National Social Science Fund of China	03	0.074
University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System	03	0.074
Amazon Educational Research Grant	02	0.049
Australian Government	02	0.049
Economic Social Research Council ESRC	02	0.049
Elsevier Foundation	02	0.049
Erasmus Program Under Key Activity 2 Strategic Partnership Supporting Innovation ERASMUS Project	02	0.049
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities	02	0.049
Guangzhou Association For Science Technology of China	02	0.049
Hospital Libraries Section Medical Library Association MLA New York New Jersey Chapter MLA	02	0.049

TP = Total Publication.

Appendix 3

Table 8.

Distribution of top 20 journals articles by citations (2001–2020).

Article title	Authors	ISSN	Vol./no.	PY	TC
Information and digital literacies: A review of concepts	Bawden, D	0022-0418	2001	57(2)	335
Critical information literacy: Implications for instructional practice	Elmborg, J	0099-1333	2006	32(2)	197
Information literacy as a sociotechnical practice	Tuominen, K; Savolainen,R; Talja, S	0024-2519	2005	75(3)	160
Student searching behavior and the web: Use of academic resources and Google	Griffiths, JR; Brophy, P	0024-2594	2005	53(4)	155
A discipline-based approach to information literacy	Grafstein, A	0099-1333	2002	28(4)	127
Attaining information literacy: An investigation of the relationship between skill level, self-estimates of skill, and library anxiety	Gross, M; Latham, D	0740-8188	2007	29(3)	110
The role of the academic library in promoting student engagement in learning	Kuh, GD; Gonyea, RM	0010-0870	2003	64(4)	110
Testing information literacy in digital environments: ETS’s iSkills assessment	Katz, IR	0730-9295	2007	26(3)	94
Assessing information literacy among undergraduates: A discussion of the literature and the University of California–Berkeley assessment experience	Maughan, PD	0010-0870	2001	62(1)	93
A service quality and success model for the information service industry	Landrum, H; Prybutok, VR	0377-2217	2004	156(3)	88
Information literacy assessment: Where do we start?	Walsh, A	0961-0006	2009	41(1)	85
Information literacy 1973–2002: A selected literature review	Rader, HB	0024-2594	2002	51(2)	82
What qualifications and skills are important for digital librarian positions in academic libraries? A job advertisement analysis	Choi, Y; Rasmussen, E	0099-1333	2009	35(5)	79
Critical incident technique and explicitation interviewing in studies of information behavior	Urquhart, C; Light, A; Thomas, R;Barker, A; Yeoman, A; et. al.	0740-8188	2003	25(1)	78
Information literacy: A contradictory coupling	Pawley, C	0024-2519	2003	73(4)	77
The value of library and information services in patient care: Results of a multisite study	Marshall, JG; Sollenberger,J; Easterby-Gannett,S; Morgan, et. al.	1536-5050	2013	101(1)	68
Recasting information literacy as sociocultural practice: Implications for library and information science researchers	Lloyd, A	1368-1613	2007	12(4)	63
Using rubrics to assess information literacy	Knight, LA	0090-7324	2006	34(1)	63
Trapped between a rock and a hard place: What counts as information literacy in the and how is it conceptualized?	Lloyd, A	0024-2594	2011	60(2)	62
A strategy for academic libraries in the first quarter of the 21st century	Lewis, DW	0010-0870	2007	68(5)	62

TC = Total Citations, PY = Publication Year.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Nusrat Ali

Muhammad Shoaib

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