Abstract
This article surveys topic distributions of the academic literature that employs the terms bibliometrics, scientometrics, and informetrics. This exploration allows informing on the adoption of those terms and publication patterns of the authors acknowledging their work to be part of bibliometric research. We retrieved 20,268 articles related to bibliometrics and applied methodologies that exploit various features of the dataset to surface different topic representations. Across them, we observe major trends including discussions on theory, regional publication patterns, databases, and tools. There is a great increase in the application of bibliometrics as science mapping and decision-making tools in management, public health, sustainability, and medical fields. It is also observed that the term bibliometrics has reached an overall generality, while the terms scientometrics and informetrics may be more accurate in representing the core of bibliometric research as understood by the information and library science field. This article contributes by providing multiple snapshots of a field that has grown too quickly beyond the confines of library science.
Highlights
Bibliometric methodologies are considered useful as supporting tools for decision-making in setting research priorities, tracking the evolution of science and technology, funding allocation, and rewarding scientific excellence, among others
Following a keyword-based approach for data extraction but with the scope of finding differences between bibliometric research within and outside information and library science we found the work of Jonkers and Derrick (2012) who studied 3,852 bibliometric articles published between 1991 and 2010 and compared citations and author from articles published in library science journals and articles in other journals
Academic articles on bibliometrics were retrieved from a bibliographic database resulting in 20,268 articles published between 1969 and 2021
Summary
Bibliometric methodologies are considered useful as supporting tools for decision-making in setting research priorities, tracking the evolution of science and technology, funding allocation, and rewarding scientific excellence, among others. Given their versatility, these methods have quickly spread beyond the information and library science domain from where they initiated. When executed properly bibliometric methods offer an abundance of benefits to other disciplines and it cannot be expected to be contained In this direction, bibliometricians are left with the task of documented the development of the field and explaining its characteristics as it evolves
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