Access to public information: a scientometric study of legal versus voluntary transparency in the public sector

Abstract

The aim of this study is to identify, synthesise and evaluate the current state of research into transparency in the public sector, with respect to the period 2005–2014, in order to provide a critical overview of published trends in this field and to identify future areas of interest. Specifically, we focus on the questions of mandatory and voluntary transparency that arouse most interest among researchers, institutions and journals in this field, with particular attention to the methodological aspects of the studies considered. To achieve these aims, various scientometric approaches are applied to articles included in the 2014 edition of the ISI Journal Citation Reports database for the research areas “Public Administration”, “Political Science” and “Information and Library Science”. During the past ten years the number of studies published in this field has increased considerably, particularly as regards voluntary transparency.