The dynamics of research subfields for library and information science: an investigation based on word bibliographic coupling

Uncovering research topics, manifesting the relationships, and revealing the structure in a discipline are major and important research issues in library and information science (LIS). To understand the evolution of research subfields in LIS during two periods, 2009 to 2013 and 2014 to 2018, this study proposes and applies a novel method, word bibliographic coupling, to measure the relationships between different feature words extracted from 21,066 research articles published in 44 LIS journals. According to the results of factor analysis, the top 25 subfields are identified for each period. The results show that core research subfields in LIS remain relatively stable, but new subfields replaced old ones due to the change of society or the development of technology. The subfields identified in this study can be further categorized into six main research trends, including Scholarly Communication and Scientometrics, Information Behavior and Information Retrieval, Applications of Technology, Library Services and Management, Health Information and Technology, and Computer Science Techniques. Most subfields related to the same research trend correlated to each other, but the subfields of Library Services and Management scatter over the networks. This study depicts the recent development of research subfields and significant research trends in LIS.