Publication and citation patterns of Korean LIS research by subject areas

Many researchers have suggested careful application of bibliometric indicators to research evaluation because of many factors including disciplinary norms that influence the publication and citation behaviors of researchers. Although some researchers have examined different bibliometric patterns across disciplines, relatively few scholars have focused on whether research performance should be evaluated in a uniform manner across research domains within a single discipline, especially in a multi-disciplinary fields such as library and information science (LIS). In order to ascertain whether such subject-specific differences exist in the LIS field, we conducted a bibliometric study that examined the publication and citation patterns across subject areas of LIS research in Korea. The analysis of our study data, which consisted of 6,838 citations to 1,986 domestic papers published between 2001 and 2010 by 163 LIS faculty members in Korea, revealed some evidence of bibliometric pattern differences across subject areas. In particular, we found that the authors in Bibliographic Studies, who were almost twice as productive as authors in other subject areas, received the lowest citation counts, which might be attributed to their different publishing and citing behaviors. Publication and citation patterns across subject areas of LIS papers and observation of the possible effect of sub-disciplinary culture on citing behaviors suggest the need for subject-specific assessment of multidisciplinary research discipline such as LIS. In future studies, we will investigate different publication and citation behaviors of authors by subject areas.