Global research on information literacy: a bibliometric analysis from 2005 to 2014
| Pages | 283-298 |
| Published date | 03 April 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-08-2015-0160 |
| Date | 03 April 2017 |
| Author | Shankar Reddy Kolle |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Global research on information
literacy: a bibliometric analysis
from 2005 to 2014
Shankar Reddy Kolle
Library, University of Horticultural Sciences, Bagalkot, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature published on information literacy (IL) from
2005 to 2014 and reveal the key aspects of IL publication trends.
Design/methodology/approach –The study analyses the literature indexed in Web of Science database
on IL from 2005 to 2014 and used the required bibliometric measures to analyse specic aspects of publishing
trends.
Findings –The ndings of the study reveal that increase in literature on IL from 2005 to 2014 was noticed.
A high amount of annual growth of literature on IL is observed for the year of 2007, 2008 and 2011. “Pinto, M”
and the “University of Granada, Spain” was productive author and institute. Journal of Academic
Librarianship was the most productive journal, with 97 articles being published for the period. USA was the
most contributing country. “Digital divide”, “media literacy”, “pedagogy”, “higher education” and “critical
thinking” were current research topics in the IL domain.
Originality/value –The paper is very useful for researchers to learn about trends in the literature on IL, as
well as possible areas for further research, and it provides the names of the most productive authors,
organizations and countries, along with the most popular IL keywords.
Keywords Research, Digital literacy, Bibliometric analysis, Information literacy, Mapping
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The phrase information literacy (IL) was rst introduced by Zurkowski, the President of the
Information Industry Association, in 1974 (Zurkowski, 1974). The National Forum on
Information Literacy dened the phrase as:
[…] the ability to know when there is a need for information and to be able to identify, locate,
evaluate and effectively use that information for the issue or problem that at hand (Ferguson, 2005).
In other words, IL encompasses skills and the ability of a person to identify, locate, evaluate
and use the required information effectively as and when required. According to the
American Library Association’s Presidential Committee, “to be information literate, one
must be able to identify, locate, and use it properly when it is needed” (ACRL, 2005). Baro and
Zuokemefa (2011) dened the information literate are those “people who recognize their own
need for good information, and who have the skills to identify, access, evaluate, synthesize
and apply the needed information”.
IL is vital for students, teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, judges, politicians,
scientists, administrative ofcers, school children, businessman, industrial workers and
common citizens to do extremely well in their respective eld. Recognizing the signicance of
IL in higher education, numerous authors had highlighted the signicance in the current era
(Mulla, 2014;Parvathamma and Pattar, 2013;Sevukan and Gomathy, 2015;Shoeb, 2011;
Ubogu, 2011;Wang, 2011). A model curriculum is proposed to impart digital literacy skills
(basic and cognitive) to the students of Master of Business Administration by Parvathama
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Information
literacy
283
Received 26 August 2015
Revised 18 December 2015
10 May 2016
Accepted 24 July 2016
TheElectronic Library
Vol.35 No. 2, 2017
pp.283-298
©Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-08-2015-0160
and Pattar. Similarly, the IL integration model was developed based on practical experience
in higher education by Wang (2011).
The word bibliometrics has been derived from the Latin and Greek words “biblio” and
“metrics”, which refer to the application of mathematics to the study of bibliography.
Bibliometric analysis serves as a useful tool in assessing the quality of a journal and its
articles (Thanuskodi, 2010). According to Durieux and Gevenois (2010, p. 342),
“Bibliometrics is a set of mathematical and statistical methods engaged to analyse and
measure the quantity and quality of books, articles and other forms of publications”.
Bibliometric studies are increasingly being used for the research assessment of a particular
area of research (Singh et al., 2007), or person or organization (Maharana, 2013) or country
(Zhu and Willet, 2011). To review research performance, several indicators are used in
bibliometric studies.
There are three types of bibliometric indicators: quantity indicators, which measure the
productivity of a particular researcher; quality indicators, which measure the quality (or
“performance”) of a researcher’s output; and structural indicators, which measure connections
between publications, authors and areas of research (Durieux and Gevenois, 2010, p. 342).
Pritchard (1969, p. 348) dened bibliometrics as the “application of mathematical and
statistical methods to the entire scientic literature, books and other materials”. In other
words, it is a process of organization, classication and quantitative evaluation of the
publication pattern of macro-communication, along with their authorship pattern, by
mathematical and statistical calculations.
In the present research paper, the author used bibliometric analysis as the technique to
analyse published work on information literacy from 2005 to 2014, with the intention of
providing a better understanding of research outputs on IL, even though many authors
(Aharony, 2010;Johnson et al., 2012;Kondilis et al., 2008;Kumari et al., 2015;Nazim and
Ahmad, 2007;Panda et al., 2013;Pinto et al., 2013) had already conducted studies to
understand IL research trends in by using bibliometric methods: this study is different from
their studies in objectives, period covered and approach adopted.
Review of the literature
Nazim and Ahmad (2007) conducted a study to analyse 607 journal articles in the Library and
Information Science Abstracts (LISA) Plus database, by means of “information literacy” as a
search term with no date restrictions. They established that there was a clear increase in the
number of publications between the 1980s and early 2000s. Most articles in this study were
in the English language (88.3 per cent) and published in the USA (51.2 per cent). In total, 32
countries had published articles on IL. Correspondingly, Kondilis et al. (2008) examined and
compared the research productivity on selected elds related to health literacy of the current
members of the European Union (EU), in the four candidate countries waiting to join the EU,
Norway, Switzerland and the USA. The study revealed that the 25 European countries
produced less than one-third of the health literacy research when compared to the USA. The
Netherlands and Sweden (followed by Germany, Italy and France) are the European
countries with the highest number of research published in elds related to health literacy.
Aharony (2010) analysed 1,970 documents, published between 1999 and 2009, on
“information literacy” as a topic in the Web of Science database. He found that most of the
documents were in the English language (96.3 per cent) and that most documents were
published in the USA (54.1 per cent), with England a distant second and other countries even
further behind. Further, he noted that IL publications were generally increasing over time,
and that issues in health and medicine have become important areas of focus for IL
researchers. Johnson et al. (2012) examined 3,527 articles contained in the annual
EL
35,2
284
To continue reading
Request your trial