National and international trends in library and information science research: A comparative review of the literature

Abstract

The study is an attempt to understand the trends in LIS research by analyzing published literature on the topic. The study identifies and analyses 39 research papers on LIS research trends in various countries, three papers on LIS research trends in regional countries and 13 papers on LIS research trends with an international perspective. The findings of the study reveal that there is a similarity among various countries as far as the LIS research topics are concerned but with a different focus at different periods. While understanding international research trends in LIS, it was interesting to note that the research trend in China was similar to the worldwide research trend while the pattern in other countries differed.

Keywords

Library and information science LIS research research trends subject trends topics trends

Introduction

There seems to be an increased interest in the library and information science (LIS) research community to study the trends of research in LIS as a subject. Analyzing subject trends is not a recent phenomenon, with many scholars like Järvelin and Vakkari (1990), Atkins (1988) and Buttlar (1991) having initiated this more than three decades ago. The factors that can be attributed to the recent upsurge in the popularity of research on subject trend analysis may include (a) evolution of the subject of LIS into an interdisciplinary aggregate subject with Information Sciences, Computer Science, Technology, Management, Statistics, etc. being some of the significant influencers; (b) easy availability of abstracting and indexing databases to study the subject and (c) availability of free and popular science mapping tools.

The evolution of LIS as a subject into an interdisciplinary one has been appealing to the LIS research community, and Prebor (2010) argues that the role and impact of technologies in the library and library services are the main reasons behind the interdisciplinary nature of LIS as a subject. A study by Milojević et al. (2011) finds that the amalgamation of technology with the subject of LIS has changed the cognitive structure of the LIS discipline. There has also been a clear trend wherein the traditional LIS topics disappeared, and new ones appeared, and most of these emerging topics are interlinked with technology (Lariviere et al., 2012). The incorporation of these technology-related topics has made LIS into an interdisciplinary subject.

The infusion and merger of other subjects into the core of LIS as a subject make it compelling and interesting to study the evolution and changes in the subject of LIS over the years. There are a good number of research papers that delve into the changes in the LIS research trends at the international level. However, in the context of national LIS trends, there seems to be hardly any comprehensive research paper, with the exception of the one by Rochester and Vakkari (1998). Therefore, the authors thought it appropriate to address this gap and attempted to identify research on the evolution of LIS as a subject. The review of the literature reveals a lack of research that examines country-wise LIS topic trends and international LIS research, together. Therefore, the study objective is to understand the trends in topics on which LIS research has been conducted, across various countries and also internationally. The study also aims to identify the similarities and differences in LIS research across countries.

Methodology

Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO’s LISTA and Google Scholar, were used for conducting the literature review and the search terms used in the study were:

Research Trends AND ((Library Science) OR (Library and Information Science))

Subject Trends AND ((Library Science) OR (Library and Information Science))

Evolution AND ((Library Science) OR (Library and Information Science))

The authors identified papers that were relevant to the study, from these search results and thoroughly reviewed them. The criteria adopted to include papers in the present study were that they had to be peer-reviewed and focus on LIS research trends, specific to a country or international in scope.

The selected papers were divided into three categories based on geographic scope, i.e. country-specific LIS research, regional LIS research and international LIS research. In the country-specific research papers (39) the focus was on LIS research trends specific to a country, while the papers (3) in the regional category focused on a group of countries like the Gulf, Africa and Australasia and the papers (13) classified as international research papers brought in a global perspective. Each paper was examined in detail to list out the popular research topics identified in these papers.

It was interesting to note that studies included in this study, with the objective of identifying trends in LIS research, had adopted various classification schemes developed by researchers like Feehan et al. (1987), Atkins (1988), Järvelin and Vakkari (1990) – later updated in Järvelin and Vakkari (1993) and Tuomaala et al. (2005) – Cano (1999), Zins (2007), Davarpanah and Aslekia (2008), Prebor (2010), and the JITA classification scheme (http://eprints.rclis.org/view/subjects/subjects.html) for the purposes of representing LIS research topics. A few studies had also used the co-word analysis, title word analysis, and co-citation analysis methods, and other simple bibliometric methods like keyword analysis to represent the research topics. In the present study, the researchers have considered topics as provided in the original papers.

Limitation of the study

The review of research studies covered in this study reveals variations in the methods used and does lead to difficulty in comparison. For instance, the very understanding of LIS (in terms of topics covered) may vary across geographies, the sources used in the studies vary from journals (national or international) to theses (Doctoral/Master’s), the time period of the reviews are not similar, studies have used different strategies to identify topics like keywords analysis, co-word analysis, and content analysis.

Another limitation of the study is that the literature reviewed by the researchers includes only English language publications. Despite these limitations, the study has value, as the present research does indicate broad trends across geographies and enhances our understanding of the growth of LIS as a subject.

LIS research trends in specific countries

Australia

The early LIS research (1985–1994) in Australia was dominated by topics like LIS service activities, information seeking, and library history (Rochester, 1995). The author adopted the content analysis method developed by Järvelin and Vakkari (1990) to identify the popular research topics during that period by exploring the papers published in two leading LIS journals of Australia.

Middleton and Yates (2014) analyzed scholarly research published between 2005 and 2013. The authors examined the 115 theses and 1604 research publications and found that information behavior, information literacy, management, information resources, and services were the most popular topics of research.

Botswana

Moahi (2008) studied 285 research papers indexed in the Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database and published by LIS researchers from Botswana in the three periods of 1980–1990, 1991–2000, and 2001–2006. In the period 1980–1990, the popular topics included library education, management and planning, publishing, and special libraries; in 1991–2000 the popular topics were library automation/ICT, library education, and library and development and in the period 2001–2006 the popular topics were library automation/ ICT, and library operation. The topics that had been consistently pursued across years included library automation/ICT, library education, library operations, archive and records management, and information seeking.

Canada

Paul-Hus et al. (2016) analyzed 1580 papers published between 2010 and 2015 by 1446 distinct authors drawn from the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) directory using Google Scholar. The study used Gephi software to find out significant clusters in LIS research in Canada and the analysis shows that technology-orientated topics like information system and technology, information visualization, users and uses of the information system, information retrieval and human-computer interaction were the most popular ones.

China

The earliest study on LIS research in China by Cooper (1987) analyzed the library literature published in Mainland China to understand the subject trends. The results of the study show that the orientation of earlier LIS research was the role of libraries in society and library profession in addition to other important topics like technical services, cataloging, and classification. Another interesting publication on LIS research trends was by Huanwen (1996) who analyzed articles published in three specific years, i.e. 1985 (1930 articles), 1990 (2447 articles) and 1994 (2665 articles). The author devised a classification scheme based on topics that formed the essence of LIS to study the research trends. The findings of the study show that LIS research in China was more or less similar, in the context of research topics over the three time periods. The basic theory of LIS and information services were the major research areas in addition to principles of LIS, classification and indexing, information management and circulation. The study also revealed that LIS research in China was more focused on theory when compared to international research, which was more on practice-oriented topics.

Ma (2012) studied articles published between 1998 and 2007 and identified 11 subject clusters, which represent the focus of LIS research in China. The results of the study showed that LIS subfield had been changing since 1998 and the topics which had emerged and gained popularity were webometrics, competitive intelligence and ontology. The study also found that there seemed to be a consistent interest on topics like bibliometrics and intellectual property rights, and information retrieval, while topics on the decline included cataloging, knowledge organization and digital library. In the context of sources used in these studies, in addition to journal articles, many researchers had used doctoral dissertations to identify the research trends.

Zong et al. (2013) studied 640 PhD dissertations awarded between 1994 and 2011 to identify the intellectual structure of LIS. The most popular research areas identified were an information resource, information need and services, ontology, semantic web, electronic government, information resource management, knowledge management and digital library.

The more recent study on China was by Hu et al. (2013) that analyzed LIS papers from the Chinese Social Science Citation Index (2008–2012). The paper found that LIS research in China was very varied and could be categorized into 13 topic clusters that included information retrieval, ontology, data mining, information services, information organization, knowledge management, digital library, information literacy, the social network. The findings also revealed that LIS research in China was continuously evolving from traditional topics like classification, cataloging to bibliometrics and information retrieval, to new topics like data mining, ontology, digital library and social networks.

Denmark

The study by Kajberg (1996) found that the popular LIS research topics between 1957 and 1986 in Denmark included individual libraries/national library system, library collection and materials, building and equipment, administration and management, network and resource sharing, librarianship, automation, and library policy. The topics reflected a strong concern for issues relevant in practicing librarianship. The study had adopted a specially developed hierarchical classification scheme based on the work of Feehan et al. (1987). The journals used in the study included: Bibliofek 70, Bibliotekaren, Biblioteksarbejde, Bogens Verden, DF-Revy, Skolebiblioteket, Nordisk Tidskrifr for Bokoch Biblioteksvlisen, Scandinavian Public Library Quarterly, Reol and Tidskrift for Dokumentation.

It is interesting to note that the LIS research in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries was different in the sense that there seemed to be a strong link between professional work in the library and the research conducted reflecting the findings reported by Rochester and Vakkari (1998). The study also found that traditional topics with immediate implications for a working librarian were popular while theoretical development had received scant attention.

India

The studies on LIS research in India reveal that most of them have used doctoral theses as sources of data for research, while very few of them have used journal papers as data sources. One of the oldest publications on trend analysis was by Chatterjee et al. (1995) who studied 212 PhD theses reported in various information sources like University News, newsletters of ILA, IASLIC, IATLIS and other bibliographic sources that were published between 1950 to 1993. The author found that popular research areas in LIS were academic libraries, bibliometric/citation studies, cataloging, classification, and indexing.

Similarly, Lahiri (1996) studied 255 doctoral theses from 1950 to 1995 and found that topics like user studies, information needs, bibliographic control, information sources are interesting areas where LIS researcher was working apart from the bibliometrics and academic library. bibliometrics, academic library, information needs and user studies were found to be the most dominant topics in LIS research. These findings were confirmed Manjunath and Shivalingaiah (1998) while analyzing doctoral theses reported in the University News and awarded between 1987 and 1999. The analysis of the LIS topics, based on the Dewey Decimal Classification, also revealed the emergence of new topics like information system design and personnel management.

The study of 346 doctoral theses based on the bibliographic data extracted from University News and the bibliography of doctoral dissertations by Kannappanavar and Vijayakumar (2000), also revealed that topics like bibliometrics, user studies, planning and management topics were dominant research topics between 1950 and 1992. A similar study by Chandrashekhar and Ramesha (2009) of 802 doctoral theses awarded between 1957 and 2008, drawn from University News and Vidyanidhi database, found that topics like bibliometrics/scientometrics /informatics, library management, university libraries, indexing systems, information-seeking behavior and library information services were the most popular ones in LIS research. Shivalingaiah et al. (2009) analyzed 851 theses (1980 to 2007), the data of which was collected from Shodhganga database (INFLIBNET), Vidyanidhi database, University News and through a web-based survey. The study found that IT application in libraries along with library automation and human resource development was significant research areas in addition to bibliometrics and user studies. Madasamy and Alwarammal (2009) studied 171 theses indexed in the University News between 2003 and 2008. The results revealed the dominance of LIS topics like library information sources and services, user studies, library and information management, and bibliometrics.

The study by Singh and Babbar (2014) analyzed 1754 theses awarded between 1950 and 2012 collected through University News, Shodhganga (INFLIBNET) and LIS journals and newsletters. The findings reflected that in addition to popular topics like bibliometrics, user studies and information-seeking, new emerging topics like electronic resources, network and consortia, library management software, institutional repository, webometrics and knowledge management had appeared in LIS research in India.

A recent study by Maity and Hatua (2015) analyzed 1058 theses awarded between 1950 and 2012 and found that the popular topics of research among the PhD scholars were ICT applications, and studies on specific library and scholarly communication (including bibliometric research).

The few studies that use journal papers to understand LIS research trends in India include one by Mittal (2011), where she studies articles indexed in the LISA database between 1990 and 2010. The researcher used co-word analysis to identify the trend in LIS research and found research on topics like bibliometrics and user studies and then moved on to topics like copyright, digital libraries, institutional repositories, electronic resources, open access and Web 2.0. The other study by Dora and Kumar (2017) reviewed 3713 papers indexed in Indian Citation Index between 2004 and 2015 and the findings revealed that the studies could be categorized into three essential research areas of bibliometrics/scientometrics, information technology/digital libraries and traditional LIS topics (information seeking, user study, collection development). Garg and Sharma (2017) reviewed the articles published in Indian Citation Index and found that the sub-disciplines which were popular among Indian LIS researchers included bibliometrics/scientometrics/webometrics, user studies, information technology, digital libraries, and academic libraries.

Iran

The only study on LIS research trend in Iran was by Horri (2004), that reviewed 1635 papers published in 11 professional and semi-professional Persian journals, 26 proceedings, 731 defended theses and 124 Persian research reports. The topics were classified by subject using both the LISA subject categories and course titles of the Iranian LIS school. The findings revealed that popular research fields in Iran included bibliographic control, information storage and retrieval, library use and services, and information technology.

Malaysia

Goon and Singh (2007) studied 158 articles published in the Malaysian Journal of Library Science between 1996 and 2006 by Malaysian authors. The study used the classification of Järvelin and Vakkari (1993) and the findings revealed that the popular research topics included information storage and retrieval, information seeking and scientific and professional communication (including bibliometrics).

Yazit and Zainab (2007) studied the LIS research productivity of Malaysian authors and institutions by analyzing 1045 papers, published between 1965 and 2000. The study found that LIS research in Malaysia was on the rise and evolving into a developed discipline. The publication trend revealed that popular LIS topics included management of library information centers, information services, collection development and ICT applications in LIS.

New Zealand

The only study on LIS research in New Zealand by Godfrey (2016) between 2004 and 2014 found that collection management, library management, information center, information literacy and social-cultural aspects of information society were the most popular subjects. The researcher had used Zins’ classification scheme (2007) for classifying the research topics. The data sources used in the study included New Zealand Library and Information Management Journal, Archifact, LIANZA Conference Proceedings and ARANZ Conference Proceedings.

Nigeria

Oyewusi (2012) studied 72 articles published in the Nigerian School Library Journal between 1979 and 2010 to find out the subject trends in school librarianship. The study used Järvelin and Vakkari’s (1993) classification scheme to identify the research topics, and the findings revealed that the most popular topics in school library research were information seeking behavior, information literacy, communication and information technology, and evaluation of school library services.

Pakistan

The study by Naseer and Mahmood (2009) was one of the early studies that focused on trends in LIS research in Pakistan. The authors reviewed 236 journal articles that had been published between 1998 and 2007 in Pakistan Library and Information Science Journal. Adopting the JITA classification scheme for assigning subject categories, the study found that the most popular research topics included LIS profession and education, collection development and information and library technology. In their second study, Naseer and Mahmood (2014) reviewed a larger dataset of 5195 papers published over 62 years to understand the subject dispersion in LIS research in Pakistan. The study, adopting the same methodology to assign subject categories as their earlier study, revealed that the majority of the Pakistan LIS research focused on very few subject areas like information treatment for information service followed by the library as a physical collection. There seemed to be little interest in topics like library technologies, archives, museum, and management. Ahmed and Bhatti (2011) analyzed 28 LIS dissertations, identified through questionnaire and semi-structured interview and awarded between 1947 and 2010, to find out the primary research interest of researchers. The study found that the most sought-after research areas were academic library, archives, bibliometric study, cataloging, collection development.

South Korea

To understand the knowledge structure of South Korean LIS, Jeong and Kim (2005) reviewed 654 articles published in the Journal of the Korean Society of Library and Information Science (SLIS) and Journal of the Korean Society of information management (SIM) from 1970 to 1999. Research topics were classified into 22 subfields identified based on earlier researches of Järvelin and Vakkari (1990) and Jeong (1993). In addition to identifying the popular LIS research topics, the study also identified the theory used in the papers and the findings revealed that most productive subfields in LIS were cataloging/classification, lis education, information system, information services, and oriental materials.

Spain

The earliest publication on Spanish LIS research was by Cano (1999) that covered 17 years of LIS research and included 354 articles from two major Spanish journals, i.e. Revista Espanola De Documentacion Cientifica (RevDoc) and Documentacion de las Ciencias de la Informacion (Documentacion). The conceptual and methodological model proposed by Järvelin and Vakkari (1990) was adopted in the study and results of the analysis show that Spanish research concentrated on topics like information retrieval, LIS services, and scientific and professional communication included bibliometrics.

In contrast to the above study, Kawalec (2013) used JITA classification instead of Järvelin and Vakkari’s classification scheme and collected research publication data from 12 public universities. The study identified 11 topic groups in LIS research that were popular, and they included information sources, support, and channels followed by information use and sociology of information, information treatment for information services and industry, profession and education. The popular subtopics under information sources support and channel were periodical, newspaper, electronic resources, archive materials, repositories. The popular subtopic under information use and sociology of information topic were information in society and information policy and bibliometric method, information policy, archive, user studies and academic library.

A recent paper on Spanish LIS research trends by Olmeda-Gomez et al. (2017) adopted the co-word analysis method to find out the thematic landscape of LIS literature in Spain. The 2209 publications from the Web of Science database, published between 1985 and 2014 were reviewed to identify nine popular key research terms, and they included digital rights management, citation analysis, translation services, bibliometric analysis, co-authorship, electronic books, webometrics, information systems and World Wide Web. The authors also identified other LIS research topics like H-index, semantic collaboration, bibliometric indicators, ranking, universities and webometrics.

Sri Lanka

The study on LIS subject trends in Sri Lanka by Gunasekera (2008) shows that LIS literature seemed to concentrate mostly in the areas of LIS service activities, information seeking and information storage and retrieval. The paper, categorizing the topics based on Järvelin and Vakkari’s (1990) classification, analyzed the 141 articles published in Journal of University Librarian Association (JULA) and the Sri Lanka Library Review between 1997 and 2007.

Taiwan

The paper by Lin (2012) investigated the research characteristics and trends in LIS research in Taiwan by examining 2494 research papers from 11 key library science journals, 983 Master’s and Doctoral theses downloaded from NDLTD, 191 research project reports from the National Science Council of Taiwan between 2001 and 2010. The classification scheme developed by Lin (2004) was adopted to analyze the topics, and the study revealed that the most popular topics were LIS and technology, book, documentation and archives, user services and LIS theory and foundation.

The journals used in this study included Archives Quarterly, Bulletin of the Taipei Public Library Quarterly, Instructional Technology and Media, Interdisciplinary Journal of Taiwan Library Administration, Journal of Educational Media and Library Science, Journal of Librarianship and Information Studies, Journal of Library and Information Science, Journal of Library and Information Science Research, Journal of Library and Information Studies, National Central Library Bulletin and University Library Journal.

Turkey

The only study on Turkey’s LIS research was by Yontar and Yalvac (2000) that reviewed the literature published in the journal Turk Kutuphaneciligi between 1952 and 1994 and divided the study into four different periods 1952–1964, 1965–1974, 1975–1984 and 1985–1994. The content analysis of the journal articles (644 in number) revealed that the most popular topics of research from 1952 to 1994 were LIS service activities and information storage and retrieval. Table 1 shows the popular topics across the four periods of the study. The paper used Järvelin and Vakkari’s (1990) classification scheme to identify the topics and also found that the LIS research trend in Turkey had not changed much in the last 40 years.

Table 1.

LIS topics trends in Turkey across four decades.

Study period	Popular topics
1952–1964	Library and Information Services Activities, Library History, Information Storage and Retrieval
1965–1974	Library and Information Services Activities, Information Storage and Retrieval, Library History, Publishing
1975–1984	Library and Information Services Activities, Library History, Information Storage and Retrieval, Publishing, Profession
1985–1994	Library and Information Services Activities, Information Storage and Retrieval, Information Seeking, Library History, Methodology

United Kingdom

The paper by Ward (1997) includes the review of research literature published between 1965 and 1995 to examine the trends in UK LIS research. The researcher analyzed nine LIS journals and used the Järvelin and Vakkari (1990) classification scheme for representing research topics. The research was recorded in four categories that pertained to the decades of 1965, 1975, 1985, and the year 1995. The most popular LIS topics in the first category were information retrieval, use of information channel, and information and reference services. Similarly, for the decade of 1975, it was information and reference services, bibliographic databases, information retrieval, for the 1985 decade, the popular topics were admin and planning, automation and information retrieval. For the year 1995, the popular topics were admin and planning, information retrieval, and automation.

USA

Buttlar (1999) conducted a citation study of 61 titles listed in Dissertation Abstracts International under the section of LIS from 17 different ALA-accredited LIS programs. The study revealed that popular subject areas identified were related to public services in addition to other interesting areas like administration, automation/systems, collection management, bibliographic information and technical services.

Regional LIS research trends

Africa

The paper by Alemna (1996) is one of the earliest studies that researched into the papers published in the African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science, a prominent journal indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The papers included in the study were between 1990 and 1995, and 60% of them were descriptive research, while 40% were empirical. The most popular research topics included information technology, rural libraries, and status of the image of the librarians. Very few papers focused on topics like bibliometrics and technical services. An extended study of the same journal by Alemna (2001) between 1996 and 2000 revealed that information technology remained the most popular topic for the African LIS research community, in addition to the emergence of new topics like publishing, record management, bibliometrics and academic libraries.

The Gulf and the Arab region

To understand the status of LIS research in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), Al-Ansari (2008) reviewed the LIS papers published by these countries. The study included 282 papers published between 1975 and 2005 and indexed in LISA and Library Literature databases. The analysis of the papers revealed that research on topics like IT applications in libraries, electronic information resources, LIS education, academic libraries, and information-seeking was the most popular.

Zakaria (2015) reviewed LIS papers published between 1981 and 2010 in eight reputed Arabian (18 countries) LIS journals. The study found that the most popular research topic was librarianship, followed by information technology and technical services. The other major topics included information resources and library information services.

Australasia

Dorner (2001) reviewed papers published in 11 LIS journals published from the Australasian region (Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Western Samoa, Vanuatu) between 1991 and 2000. The study results showed that LIS researchers in this region were more inclined towards professional topics relevant for practicing librarianship as compared to theoretical topics. The dominant research topics included LIS services, information seeking, and the library profession in that period.

International LIS research trends

One of the earliest studies which analyzed international research trends in LIS was by Atkins (1988) who analyzed the papers published in College & Research Libraries, Information Technology and Libraries, Journal of Academic Librarianship, Library Quarterly, Library Resources & Technical Services, American Libraries, Library Journal, ASIS Journal and Library Trends. Each of the 2705 papers, published between 1975 and 1984, was rigorously examined and categorized into 58 subject topics. The most popular topics identified in the study included library management, information retrieval, databases, cataloging, public library, library automation, librarianship, and technology.

A similar study by Buttlar (1991), identified LIS research topics from 1725 papers published between 1987 and 1989 in College & Research Libraries, Information Technology and Libraries, Journal of Academic Librarianship, Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, Journal of Library Administration, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Libraries and Culture, Library & Information Science Research, Library Quarterly, Library Resources & Technical Services, Library Trends, Public Library Quarterly, RQ, School Library Media Quarterly, Serial Librarian and Special Libraries. The study found that the most popular subjects were cataloging, automation, library management, LIS education, collection management, reference service, networking, and OPAC.

Kumpulainen (1991) used the classification scheme devised by Järvelin and Vakkari (1990) to find out the most prominent LIS topics in the year 1975. The paper reviewed 632 articles published in 30 journals and found that the two most common subject groups in LIS research were library and information science services (circulation, collection management, administration) and information storage and retrieval (classification, indexing, information retrieval). The study by Järvelin and Vakkari (1993) included the review of articles published over 20 years (1965–1985) to understand the topic distribution of LIS. The study sample consisted of 142, 359 and 449 research articles published in 1965, 1975 and 1985 respectively, by 40 LIS journals. The results revealed that although there were few interesting changes, the main focus of LIS research had not significantly changed from 1965 to 1985. The principal topics that dominated the trend were the same, i.e. information storage and retrieval followed by library and information science service activities. The most remarkable change identified in the study from 1965 to 1985 was that there seemed to be a loss of interest in methodology over time and topics like Information storage, and retrieval includes classification and indexing were gaining popularity.

Another critical study on topic trends was by Astrom (2002) who analyzed keywords and citations of 1135 articles published between 1998 and 2000 in five highest-ranked LIS journals (College & Research Libraries, Information Technology and Libraries, Library Quarterly, Library Trends and Journal of Academic Librarianship) and four highest-ranked Information Science journals (Journal of Documentation, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Information Processing and Management and Journal of Information Science). The study found that the LIS research centered around the three clusters of library science (including academic library, electronic library, library services, collection, etc.), information retrieval (information retrieval, online search, Internet, information system, World Wide Web, information seeking etc.), and bibliometrics (scholarly journal, information science, electronic publishing, citation analysis).

Later on, Astrom (2007) extended the study by 15 years (1990–2004) and reviewed papers from 21 LIS journals. The researcher used Web of Science database to extract the records and Bibexcel software for bibliometric analysis and found that popular topics included information retrieval, information seeking, bibliometrics, webometrics, World Wide Web and information search. The analysis of articles in three distinct periods of showed that information seeking and information retrieval dominated the period 1990–1994, information seeking and information retrieval and informetrics research was popular in 1995–1999 while in the period 2000–2004, webometrics and information seeking and information retrieval became dominant.

The topics like librarianship and Internet also had a significant impact on LIS research in 1994–2004, as seen in the study by Blessinger and Frasier (2007). The study analysed 2220 papers published in Journal of Documentation, College & Research Libraries, Library Resource & Technical Services, Library and Information Science, Library & Information Science Research, Library Trends, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Information Technology and Libraries, Knowledge Organization, Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science (these 10 LIS journals were selected from a random sample of 28 LIS journals). The subjects or topics of each record were determined from subjects listed in the index of Library Literature and SSCI. The other favorite topics of LIS research included cataloging, user studies, Internet, serials, librarianship, reference/information services, information retrieval. It was interesting to note that information retrieval and user studies had been consistent as popular topics in other studies too.

There have been many longitudinal studies on topic trends in LIS research, and one of such paper was Milojević et al. (2011) who conducted a 20-year study (1988–2007) of papers from 16 LIS journals recommended by American Library Association Deans and Directors. The study showed that the papers concentrated around three main branches of LIS, the library-related, information-related and equally distinct bibliometrics/scientometrics. The library-related topics included academic librarianship, collection building, information literacy, knowledge management and digital library; information-related topics included information retrieval, web search, catalogs and databases, and the bibliometrics/scientometrics included author productivity, citation studies, and bibliometric indicators. The study also reported the development of information seeking as a branch in itself.

Aharony (2012) in a study of 417 papers (selected by systematic sampling from 1250 papers) published in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Scientometrics, Journal of Information Processing and Management, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Journal of Information Science, Journal of Documentation, Information Research, College & Research Libraries, Library & Information Science Research and Journal of Global Information Management during the period 2007–2008. The study identified 856 keywords using Zins’ (2007) classification and found that the identified topics focused on four major research areas in LIS, i.e. information technology, bibliometrics/scientometrics/webometrics, social information science classification (information need) and information retrieval.

The paper by Larivière et al. (2012) included a study of 96,000 articles published in 160 journals (drawn from Web of Science) between 1900 and 2010 and found that the title words that had a positive growth trend were information, technology, citation analysis, bibliometric*, impact, journal, scholarly, access, user, use, search, management, knowledge, theory, model, research, data, behaviour, information seeking, health, clinical, literacy, network, social network* and academic libraries. The study also identified prominent words that were on the decline and they included library*, librarian, book, university, public, children, archive*, catalog*, subject head*, index*, classification and retrieval.

The other longitudinal study in this domain was by Tuomaala et al. (2014) that included the analysis of LIS research articles published in 29 core LIS journals in 2005, 22 journals in 1985 and 10 journals in 1965. Järvelin and Vakkari’s (1990) classification that was updated in Järvelin and Vakkari (2005) with new subclasses was adopted in the study. The results revealed that information retrieval had been the most popular area of research and papers on library science and activities decreased from 1985, while research on information seeking and scientific communication grew during the study period. The other interesting finding of the study was the change of focus from the LIS organization to end-user and system development along with increased attention to evaluation and experimentation.

Liu et al. (2015) reviewed the 10,648 bibliographic records published in 16 leading LIS journals between 2001 and 2013. The paper used the formal concept analysis method to identify the intellectual structure of LIS. By examining the papers, the author identified nine main themes in LIS, and they included bibliometrics, scientometrics and infometrics, citation analysis, information retrieval, information behavior, libraries, user studies, social network analysis, information visualization and webometrics.

Onyancha (2018) investigates the evolution of LIS research by tracking the author-supplied keywords in the papers published in between 1971 and 2015 and extracted from SSCI, SCI and AHCI under the label of information science/library science. The data were categorized into two 10-year and one 5-year (1971–1980, 1991–2000 and 2011–2015) periods. The study found that focus of LIS research shifted from topics like information system design and management in the 1970s to information systems, information technology, information retrieval, expert systems in 1990s and then to scientific communication, information storage, and retrieval, knowledge management and user education in 2015.

Conclusion and further research

Table 2 depicts the decade-wise view of LIS research trends in various countries in addition to international research. It is interesting to note from Table 2 that the earliest literature covered in the studies related to LIS research trends, is from the 1950s and the pioneers were India and Turkey. India has been consistent and continuing the research until the current decade of the 2010s, while Turkey does not have studies for literature published after the 1980s. Denmark has research on LIS literature from the 1960s till the 1980s and none after that. One can say that studies on LIS research picked up in the 1960s from Malaysia, Denmark, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom in addition to international studies. United Kingdom, USA, South Korea, Africa, and Australasia do not have studies on LIS research after the 1990s. In fact, USA and Taiwan have studied for only one decade of LIS research, i.e. 1990 and 2000 respectively. In addition to India, international research has been consistent, and there exist studies that cover the literature for each decade since the 1960s to the 2010s. China and Australia were the only other countries that had studies of the recent decade of 2010, and both these countries have studies on LIS research since the 1980s. One can say that in addition to international studies, research from India, China, and Australia cover LIS research continuously.

Table 2.

Most popular topics across country and study period.

Study	1950	1960	1970	1980		1990	2000	2010
International		Classification and Indexing, Automation, Library Collection, LIS Profession (Järvelin and Vakkari, 1993)	Classification and Indexing, IR, LIS Edu, LIS Services, Library Management, IR, Automation(Järvelin and Vakkari, 1993; Kumpulainen, 1991; Atkins, 1988)	IR, Collection, LIS Profession, Library Management, Automation, Databases, Cataloging, LIS Education (Järvelin and Vakkari, 1993; Atkins, 1988; Buttlar, 1991)		IR, Information Seeking, Academic Libraries, Bibliometric, Cataloging, User Studies (Astrom, 2002; Blessinger and Frasier 2007; Astrom, 2007)	IR, LIS Service Activities, Information Seeking, Scientific Professional Communication (Bibliometric), IT, Librarianship, Webometrics, (Tuomaala et al., 2014; Aharony, 2012; Blessinger and Frasier, 2007)	IR, Bibliometric, Knowledge Management, Social Media, Academic Libraries, Citation Analysis, Innovation (Onyancha, 2018)
Gulf and Arab Region			Automation, IT Application, Librarianship, Electronic Resources, LIS Education,Technical services, IS (Al-Ansari, 2008; Zakaria, 2015)
Africa Region						IT, Academic and Rural Libraries, Librarianship, Publishing, Record Management, Bibliometric (Alemna, 1996, 2001)
Australasia						LIS Services, IS and Library Profession (Dorner, 2001)
Australia				LIS Service Activities, IS and Library History(Rochester, 1995)			Information Behaviour, IL, Management of InformationResources and Services (Middleton and Yates, 2014)
Botswana				LIS Education, Management and Planning, Publishing, Special Libraries (Moahi, 2008)		Library Automation, ICT, LIS Education, Library and Development (Moahi, 2008)	Library Automation, ICT, LIS Education, Library Operation, Archive and Record Management, IS (Moahi, 2008)
Canada								Information System and Technology, Information Visualization, IR, User and Use of the Information System (Paul-Hus, 2016)
China				Libraries and Society, LIS Profession, Management and Administration, Cataloguing, Classification (Copper, 1987)		Principle of LIS, Classification and Indexing, IR, Information Collection and Storage (Huanwen, 1996)	Basic Theory of Library Science, Information Science, Digital Information Resources and Use (DL), Information Organization and Retrieval (Ma, 2012)	IR, Ontology, Data Mining, Information Services, Information Organization, KM, DL, IL (Hu et al., 2013, Zong et al., 2013)
Denmark		Specific Region and Countries, Building and Equipment, Cooperation, Network and Resource Sharing (Kajberg, 1996)	Specific Region and Countries, Materials/collection, Building, and Equipment (Kajberg, 1996)	Materials/collection, Specific Region and Countries, Multimedia, Library Policy (Kajberg, 1996)
India	Library Movement/Legislation, Classification, User Studies (Chatterjee et al., 1995)User/Use Studies, Information Needs, Academic Libraries, Bibliographic Control (Indexing, Classification, thesaurus (Lahiri, 1996)			Classification, Library Services, Reference Services, User Studies, Academic Libraries (Chatterjee et al., 1995; Lahiri, 1996)		Library Services, User Studies, University Libraries, Academic Libraries, IR, LIS Education, Bibliometric (Mittal, 2011; Manjunatha and Shivalingaiah, 1998)	Bibliometric, DL, E-Journals, Automation, Library Services, User Studies, Academic Libraries (Dora and Kumar, 2017; Madasamy and Alwarammal, 2009; Garg and Sharma, 2017)	Bibliometric, E-Resources, E-Journals, Library Services, User Studies, IT, DL, Academic Libraries (Dora and Kumar, 2017; Garg and Sharma, 2017)
Iran			Library Information Centre, Library Collection (Horri, 2004)
Malaysia		Management of Library Information Centre, Information Services, Collection Developmentand Management, ICT Application in LIS (Yazit and Zainab, 2007)					ISR, IS and Scientific and Professional Communication includes Bibliometric) (Goon and Singh,2007)
New Zealand							Collection Management, Library Management, Information Centre, IL, Socio Cultural Aspect of Information Society (Godfrey, 2016)
Nigeria					ISB, IL, ICT, Evaluation of School Library Services (Oyewusi, 2012)
Pakistan		Cataloging, Indexing, Academic and Special Libraries, Librarianship, LIS Education (Nasser and Mahmood, 2014)					Library Profession, LIS Education, Collection, IT (Nasser and Mahmood, 2009)
South Korea			Cataloging/Classification, LIS History, Education (Jeong and Kim, 2005)	Cataloging/Classification, LIS Education, ISandR (Jeong and Kim, 2005)		Cataloging/Classification, ISandR, Serials, LIS Education, Bibliometric (Jeong and Kim, 2005)
Sri Lanka						LIS Service Activities, Information Seeking (Gunasekera, 2008)
Spain			LandIS Services, IR, Scientific Professional Communication include Bibliometric (Cano, 1999)				Cataloging, Indexing, Content Analysis, Bibliometric, Information Policy, Education, Use Study (Kawalec, 2013)
Taiwan							LIS and Technology, User Services, Books, Documentation, Archives (Lin, 2012)
Turkey	LIS Service Activities, Library History, ISandR (Yontar and Yalvac, 2000)	LIS Service Activities, ISandR, Library History, Publishing (Yontar and Yalvac, 2000)	LIS Service Activities, Library History, ISandR, Publishing, Profession (Yontar and Yalvac, 2000)	LIS Service Activities, ISandR, IS, Library History, Methodology (Yontar and Yalvac, 2000)
United Kingdom		IR, Use of Information Channel, Information and Reference Services (Ward, 1997)	Information and Reference Services, Bibliographic Databases, IR (Ward, 1997)	Admin and Planning, Automation, IR (Ward, 1997)		Admin and Planning, IR, Automation (Ward, 1997)
USA						Administration, Automation/Systems, Collection Management, Bibliographic Information and Technical Services (Buttlar, 1999)

ISandR: Information Storage and Retrieval, IR: Information Retrieval, DL: Digital Library, IL: Information Literacy, IS: Information Seeking, KM: Knowledge Management, ISB: Information Seeking Behaviour, IT: Information Technology, ICT: Information Communication Technology.

When we compare the LIS research topics in the 1950s, the popular ones in India were classification, user studies, and academic libraries while in Turkey the common topics were LIS service activity, library history, information storage, and retrieval.

For example, the decade 1960 and 1970 was the decade of classification and indexing research internationally, but for countries like Denmark, it was building equipment and materials/collection. Similarly, for India and South Korea, during the same decades, the research interest was on library legislation, user studies, library history, and education apart from the popular topic of classification and indexing.

The emphasis of international research was on topics like library automation, information retrieval, cataloging, and the LIS profession in the 1980s. At the same time, the focus of Australian research was on LIS services and library history, and for Spain, it was library services, bibliometrics, and information retrieval. The trend in the African sub-continent was to research on LIS education and information seeking, while in India, China, and Korea, the bias was towards cataloging, classification, and library services.

The decade of the 1990s did reveal many changes in international research with the dominance of information retrieval, information seeking and user studies, and this decade also marked the appearance of bibliometrics as a research topic. In the African countries, it was automation, ICT, and information-seeking behavior research while it was LIS services that were an important research area for Australia, New Zealand, India, and Sri Lanka, including other topics like user studies and information retrieval, classification, indexing, and cataloging. In China and South Korea, classification and information storage and retrieval were still the primary topics of research.

The bibliometrics and webometrics research topics were dominating the international LIS research along with topics like information retrieval and LIS services in 2000. Similarly, at the country-specific level, topics of research included bibliometrics and webometrics that were dominant in countries China and India. ICT and digital library were other areas on which research focus was evident both at the international and country-specific level.

Interestingly, in African countries, research attention seemed to be on topics like automation, information seeking and ICT. In Australia and New Zealand, the popular research topics in LIS comprised of collection management, databases, and information behavior and in Taiwan, it was LIS and technology, user services, and archives. In Pakistan, the LIS research topics included library profession, education, and collection while the Malaysian researcher was interested in topics like information storage and retrieval and information seeking.

Bibliometrics was the most researched topic in the decade of 2010, apart from topics like knowledge management, social media, citation analysis, information retrieval, and innovations. This decade also witnessed a significant shift in Chinese research, where the topics that dominated the LIS research were from the information science domain, e.g. IR, ontology, data mining, information system, and information organization. LIS research in India was dominated by topics like bibliometrics, electronic resources/journals, and library services during this period.

The review of the studies shows that each country had its focus on research. For instance, in Australia, New Zealand and Turkey, LIS service activities dominated the research, while in Denmark, it was buildings, and collection research. LIS research in African countries was on topics like information seeking, education, IT, and automation-related research. In Arabian countries, LIS research was dominated by topics like automation, librarianship, electronic resources, education and technical services. The Chinese LIS research witnessed a shift from classification and indexing to pure information science topics like bibliometrics. Similarly, Indian research shifted from classification and user studies to bibliometrics and electronic resources and services.

The difference in the topics of LIS research may depend on several factors that include education, culture, social structure, for example in the case of research in Australian and Scandinavian countries, Rochester and Vakkari (1998) argue that social institutionalization did affect the LIS research in those countries. The other important factor that may be relevant in understanding the reasons or factors that drive research interests in LIS could be technology adoption in the libraries of that region. It may be true that issues in practical librarianship could be a catalyst for LIS researcher to select research problems. It is obvious that topics that are technology-intensive like data mining or social media may not be popular in regions where libraries may not be actively engaged in such technologies. The comparison of international LIS research with research in each country shows that there is a remarkably different research focus, despite a few similarities across countries. Further, research can be done to understand the critical factors that shape the characteristics of LIS research in a country and how the shift in focus of LIS research takes place across various countries. The author also states here that the results were depicted as original from the study.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Mallikarjun Dora

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