Assessing Asian Scholarly Research in Library and Information Science: A Quantitative View As Reflected in Web of Knowledge

This paper highlights the quantitative performance of scholarly LIS research in Asian countries based on articles published during 2001-2007 in journals indexed by the Social Science Citation Index of Web of Knowledge. The quantitative performance of Asian countries has been judged and compared on the basis of various quantitative indicators: (a) size of scientific activity measured by volume of production in various types of publications during the period of study, (b) authorship pattern and collaboration of scientific activity measured by co-authorship and the amount of national and international collaboration, (c) the pattern of citations measured by counting the cited and citing references of published articles, and (d) a newly developed metrics-research performance. The results show that during the last seven years, the publication rate has increased twofold and, among the Asian countries, the authors of the People's Republic of China contributed the greatest number of articles, followed by Taiwan and South Korea. There is also an increasing trend toward collaborative research among Asian authors, with most of the collaboration occurring either among authors from the same country or with authors of non-Asian origin. The research performance analysis indicates that articles written by authors from South Korea received the highest number of citations, followed by Taiwan. Although the quantity of articles published by authors of Taiwan and South Korea is higher than Singapore and Israel, the articles contributed by authors from these latter two blocks appear in higher-impact journals. These findings show the increasing contribution made by Asian scholars to the international LIS literature, and the quality of that research.