Topics and changing characteristics of knowledge organization research in the 21st century: a content analysis
| Date | 10 August 2022 |
| Pages | 487-508 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2022-0101 |
| Published date | 10 August 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Li Si,Yi He,Li Liu |
Topics and changing
characteristics of knowledge
organization research in the 21st
century: a content analysis
Li Si
Center for Studies of Information Resources, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China and
Department of Library Science, School of Information Management,
Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, and
Yi He and Li Liu
Department of Library Science, School of Information Management,
Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Abstract
Purpose –Knowledge organization(KO) has been advancing at a progressively rapid pace under the influence
of information technology. This study aims to explore the topics, characteristics, and trends of KO research in
the 21st century.
Design/methodology/approach –The full text of 4,360 KO-related articles published from 2000 to 2021 is
collected. Through content analysis, this study identifies the topics, research methods, and application areas of
each article, and the statistics are presented through a series of visualizations.
Findings –In total, 13 main topics, 105 sub-topics, 16 research methods, and 57 application areas are
identified. Notably, classificationhas always been an important topic, while linked data, automated techniques,
and ontology have become popular topics recently. Significant changing features have also occurred. The
versatile use of research methods has increased, with empirical research becoming the mainstream.
Application areas show a trend of refinement fromsubject areas to specific scenarios. Construction techniques
present a combination of automated techniques, crowdsourcing, and experts.
Originality/value –KO has evolved and diversified due to technological developments. This study is the first
to focus on the continuous changing features over an extended, 21-year period, as opposed to sampling a few
years. It also provides clues and insights for researchers and practitioners interested in KO to understand how
it has changed in the Semantic Web and big data context.
Keywords Knowledgeorganization, Information organization, Linked data, Ontology, Semantic web, Content
analysis
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Knowledge organization (KO) is the process of describing, representing, archiving, and
organizing documents and document representations as well as topics and concepts through
human and computer programs (Hjørland, 2008). It was primarily used in the library and
information field, such as supporting document annotation and indexing, query expansion,
retrieval, and terminology extraction to enhance access to digital resources (Tudhope and
Nielsen, 2006). However, the emergence and development of the Semantic Web since 1998 has
dramatically changed the way of knowledge organization, production, and value creation.
Especially after the Simple Knowledge Organization Systems (SKOS) and SKOS eXtension
became formal W3C recommendations in 2009, traditional knowledge organization system
(KOS) (including classification schemes, thesauri, and authority files, produced before the
arrival of the ontology-wave) has roughly expanded to ontology language represented by
RDFS/OWL and Linked Data (LD) (Zeng and Mayr, 2019). KO plays an increasingly essential
KO research in
the 21st
century
487
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 7 May 2022
Revised 7 July 2022
Accepted 13 July 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 79 No. 2, 2023
pp. 487-508
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-05-2022-0101
role in various fields like knowledge navigation, intelligent retrieval, and measurement
analysis, becoming a crucial component of large-scale information architecture, content
management, and discovery systems (Ma et al., 2015).
In this context, some journals have launched thematic studies on KO theories, methods,
and applications in the digital age, such as the special issue “Organization of Information and
Knowledge in the Big Data Environment”published by the Electronic Library in 2022.
Moreover, several conferences have been undertaken to demonstrate KO’s changes and
prospects in the Semantic Web context. For example, the 7th (2002), 13th (2014), and 15th
(2018) International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) conference discussed the
opportunities and future for KO in the digital age. New changes, new contexts, and new
features have emerged in KO under the influence of recent technological development.
Hence, it is necessary to examine the topics and changing characteristics of KO research
initiated by the emergence of technology. Nonetheless, to the best of our knowledge, little
literature has been written so far focusing on the continuous changes in KO, and most of them
have only sampled 8-year or 10-year (e.g. Joo et al., 2018;Wang et al., 2017;Arboit et al., 2012).
Motivated by the lack of analysis of KO studies in the new environment, this study aims to
identify research topics and changing features of KO from 2000 to 2021 at 21 years intervals.
More specifically, the main research questions (RQs) that need to be addressed are as
follows:
RQ1. What are the research topics of KO, and what are the trends in these topics?
RQ2. What are the current research interests?
RQ3. What are the characteristics of KO’s (a) research methods, (b) application areas, and
(c) construction techniques?
RQ1 is solved by coding and classifying the research topics of collected articles. RQ2 is
determined by ranking the number of publications in Stage 2 (2014–2021). RQ3 is examined
by comparing the average annual number of articles published in Stage 1 (2000–2013) and
Stage 2, and it reports the rise and fall of popular topics, application areas, and
methodological choices in KO. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section
2reviews related works on KO. Section 3 details the methods used in content analysis,
including data collection, data coding, and reliability validation. Section 4 visualizes the
results through a set of charts, while Section 5 presents answers to each research question.
Section 6 concludes the results, implications, and limitations.
2. Literature review
2.1 Research topics and trends
Studies that explore research topics and trends of KO are extensive and generally fall into
three categories: bibliometric, data mining, and thematic and content analysis. This section
reviews studies that have used these three approaches to analyze the topics and trends of KO
after 2000.
The most straightforward method is to check the top keywords ranked by frequency in
articles from specific journals or conferences. Wang et al. (2017) conducted a quantitative
analysis of 542 KO literature in the Web of Science (WoS) database from 2007 to 2016. They
found that the research areas were mainly concentrated in classification and ontology. Cao
et al.’s (2017) bibliometric analysis of research topics in Knowledge Organization journals
2009–2016 revealed the current interest in applying traditional KO in new contexts, such as
different languages, domains, and resource types. Arboit et al. (2012) examined the
relationship between authors and main thematic categories in the last five ISKO Conferences,
indicating that fundamentals of KO were an important topic and the application of linguistics
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