Who Is Citing Whom: Citation Network Analysis Among HRD Publications from 1990 to 2007

Abstract

A citation network analysis among four major journals in human resource development (HRD) was conducted to discover the major themes of published articles in HRD. A total of 1,410 articles from 1990 to 2007 were coded. Following the examination of attributes of the citation network, main path analysis, influence analysis, and reduced network analysis were conducted. The key findings are (a) the HRD citation network shares the attributes of a small world network which is characterized as high cohesiveness locally and low separation globally; (b) HRD texts tend to gather around papers dealing with three significant topics; (c) a reduced citation network was generated based on cliques and divided into four blocks; and (d) a geographical position of a text in the citation network was highly associated with the topics (theory building or training transfer) and with the nature of the study (foundational or applied). Implications of the current study and suggestions for future study based on the limitations of the study are addressed.