Abstract
Forecasting is one of the methods applied in many studies in the library and information science (LIS) field for numerous purposes, from making predictions of the next Nobel laureates to potential technological developments. This study sought to draw a picture for the future of the LIS field and its sub-fields by analysing 97 years of publication and citation patterns. The core Web of Science indexes were used as the data source, and 123,742 articles were examined in-depth for time series analysis. The social network analysis method was used for sub-field classification. The field was divided into four sub-fields: (1) librarianship and law librarianship, (2) health information in LIS, (3) scientometrics and information retrieval and (4) management and information systems. The results of the study show that the LIS sub-fields are completely different from each other in terms of their publication and citation patterns, and all the sub-fields have different dynamics. Furthermore, the number of publications, references and citations will increase significantly in the future. It is expected that more scholars will work together. The future subjects of the LIS field show astonishing diversity from fake news to predatory journals, open government, e-learning and electronic health records. However, the findings prove that publish or perish culture will shape the field. Therefore, it is important to go beyond numbers. It can only be achieved by understanding publication and citation patterns of the field and developing research policies accordingly.
Highlights
Price (1963 p. 19, 1974, p. 166), predicted more than half a century ago that if the exponential growth of big science continued, we could have two scientists for each person and dog in the population in the future, and we could have one million academic journals by the 2000s
The current total number of active journals published worldwide is 380,299 (ULRICHSWEB Global Serials Directory 2020), and at least the 73,299,923 articles have been published since Price published Little Science, Big Science in 1963.1 One of Price’s biggest concerns was that if the growth of big science continued in this way, there would be no scientist who would be able to read every paper (1974, p. 165)
The results of the forecasting analyses are presented according to the number of publications, number of citations, number of references and number of authors per title
Summary
Price (1963 p. 19, 1974, p. 166), predicted more than half a century ago that if the exponential growth of big science continued, we could have two scientists for each person and dog in the population in the future, and we could have one million academic journals by the 2000s. The current total number of active journals published worldwide is 380,299 (ULRICHSWEB Global Serials Directory 2020), and at least the 73,299,923 articles have been published since Price published Little Science, Big Science in 1963.1 One of Price’s biggest concerns was that if the growth of big science continued in this way, there would be no scientist who would be able to read every paper One of the problems that creates this inequality is disciplinary differences: authors’ productivity depends on their work discipline, popularity and experience (Allison 1980; Merton 1968). Big science provides a cumulative advantage for some scientists and disciplines This cumulative advantage, in turn, affects the distribution of science funds (Bol et al 2018) and other scientific career decisions (Petersen and Penner 2014). The general characteristics of each discipline should be understood, and decisions should be made according to these characteristics to be able to make the right decisions in research evaluations
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