Big data and Knowledge Organization: initial reflections from a proposal to classify scientific production

Considering the impacts and the complexities that exist in the big data context and observed in the Knowledge Organization, reflections are necessary that highlight the possible contributions of this area to the informational development of society. With this in mind, the present research seeks to understand the big data phenomenon and its impacts on the Knowledge Organization through a classificatory proposal of scientific production. For this purpose, articles related to big data and Knowledge Organization were collected in the Scopus, Web of Science, Library and Information Science Abstracts and Base de Dados Referential de Artigos de Periodicos em Ciencia da Informacao databases. The articles were classified by reading the titles, abstracts, keywords and texts of the articles. The results demonstrate the predominance of a more applied, technological profile and oriented to processes related to the collection, curation and use of data. It concludes that it is necessary to expand research related to social, cognitive, epistemological and methodological issues, as well as the elaboration of more studies focused on ethics in this intense data scenario. It contributes to understand and expand the research scenarios about big data in the Knowledge Organization.