An author co-citation analysis of 37 years of iMetrics
| Pages | 319-337 |
| Date | 03 April 2018 |
| Published date | 03 April 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2016-0191 |
| Author | Ali Akbar Khasseh,Faramarz Soheili,Afshin Mousavi Chelak |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
An author co-citation analysis of
37 years of iMetrics
Ali Akbar Khasseh,Faramarz Soheili and Afshin Mousavi Chelak
Department of Information Science, Payame Noor University, Iran
Abstract
Purpose –This research aims to examine theintellectual structure of iMetrics through author co-citation
analysis.
Design/methodology/approach –This research uses common techniques in bibliometrics and social
network analysis.It analyses 5,944 recordsfrom the Web of Science in the field of iMetrics that are published
between 1978and 2014.
Findings –Findings indicatedthat researchers including “Garfield”,“Egghe”,“Glanzel”,“Leydesdorff”and
“Price”have receivedmany co-citations. The author co-citationanalysis in iMetrics resulted in eight thematic
clusters, including “theoretical foundations and citation analysis”,“sociology of science”,“science mapping
and visualization”,“network analysis”,“classic laws of bibliometrics”,“webometrics”,“technometrics”and
“miscellaneous”.“Theoretical foundations and citation analysis”is the biggest cluster which comprises 59
authors. The results suggest the crucial role of price medallists in shaping the intellectual structure of
knowledgein iMetrics.
Originality/value –Extracting the patterns embedded in the knowledge structure of iMetrics studies
provides beneficial informationfor both researchers and policymakers. This research study is valuablethat
used an appropriateset of records regarding both recall and precision.Furthermore, this study helps us better
understandthe characteristics of iMetrics, itssubject areas, and the prominent authorsin those areas.
Keywords Intellectual structure, Bibliometric analysis, Citation analysis,
Author co-citation analysis, iMetrics
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Nowadays, iMetrics techniquesare used in many disciplines for better understanding of the
data. According to Milojevicand Leydesdorff (2013):
Terms such as bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, and webometrics have been used to
describe quantitative studies of bibliographies (books and libraries), science, information
phenomena, and World Wide Web. Although these terms emerged in different contexts and
stemmed from different disciplinary backgrounds, they fairly quickly started being used
interchangeably. These terms can all be considered as manifestations of a single research area
with similar objectives and methods, which we call “information metrics”or iMetrics.
“Metric studies have been developed as a subsidiary branch of library and information
science over time”(Khassehet al., 2017). As noted by Milojevic and Leydesdorff (2013):
[...] iMetrics is a very active research field experiencing a growth that justifies the talk about an
explosion of iMetrics literature in the last decade. However, during the 1980s and 1990s, iMetrics
was forming and searching for its identity somewhere between science and technology studies
and information science, the research area became more established as it became closer to
information science during the 1990s.
Nevertheless, as they argue, iMetricshas well detached itself from information science and
achieved an independent socio-cognitive identity. Considering the emergence and gradual
37 years of
iMetrics
319
Received26 September 2016
Revised8 May 2017
Accepted23 June 2017
TheElectronic Library
Vol.36 No. 2, 2018
pp. 319-337
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-09-2016-0191
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
evolution of the field, it is necessary to illustrate a comprehensive and all-encompassing
picture of research in this field and toinvestigate its knowledge and intellectual structure to
explore the subject clusters and topics over a long-term period by applying a scientific
method.
The study on the knowledge structure of technical and scientificfields is possible
through various techniques and approaches, for example, the co-citation analysis which
originated from citation analysis. This technique leads to the determination of the main
concepts and subject categories in a given field.In addition, it uses the advantages of social
network analysis and, consequently, represents the possible relation between individual
authors, a group of authors, documents,journals, and so forth.
The study on the knowledge structure of a field consequently results in exploring and
explaining the hidden relationsamong bibliographic entities (Van Eck and Waltman, 2010).
Bibliographic analysis, alongside the use of the sociology of science, offers an appropriate
perspective on definitions, borders and studies in a scientificfield. The ontology and the
epistemology of the social structure of knowledge make it possible to identify the concepts
and paradigms dominated in thestructure of a field (Hyung Kim, 2012) and represent a real
image of that field. With such an idea, the current research investigates the intellectual
structure of the knowledge within the iMetricsliterature through author co-citation analysis.
Both researchers and policymakers may benefit from the patterns that are extracted from
the knowledge structureof iMetrics studies. The main questions of this research are:
RQ1. How is the frequency of citations distributed amongst the authors in the field of
iMetrics?
RQ2. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, how are the authors of the iMetrics field
clustered?
RQ3. Which topics are the most attractivein the clusters of the iMetrics field?
RQ4. Which authors are the most influentialin the clusters of the iMetrics field?
2. Literature review
The analysis of references via the co-citation studies makes it possible to represent the
intellectual structure of different disciplines. Since its introduction in 1973 by Marshakova
(1973) and Small (1973), the co-citation analysis has been widely used as a quantitative
bibliometric method to study the structure of several research areas including: sociology
(Lazer et al., 2009), entrepreneurship(Schildt et al., 2006), international management (Acedo
and Casillas, 2005), sport management (Hyung Kim, 2012), higher education (Tight, 2008),
e-learning (Chen and Lien, 2011), biology (Boyack and Klavans, 2010), operations
management (Pilkingtonand Meredith, 2009), information behaviour (González-Teruelet al.,
2015), information management systems (Shiau et al., 2015), architecture (Lee and Chung,
2014), knowledge management (Subramani et al., 2003;Walter and Ribière, 2013),
communication (Kim, 2012), hospitality management (Köseoglu et al., 2015), teacher
education (Özçınar,2015) and anti-cancer research (Xie, 2015).
A review of the related literature shows that the iMetrics research using the author co-
citation analysis has not been investigated, and the most relevantstudies on the author co-
citation analysis have been mainly conducted in library and information science (LIS). For
instance, in one of the studies conducted by the author co-citation analysis, De-Moya-
Anegon et al. (1998) identified the structure of LIS in Spain during the period from 1985 to
1994. They showed that “informetrics”and “libraries”are two major subjects in LIS
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