research topics

Analyzing the subject structure of research in this field can provide valuable information about the current state of the field, including its issues and needs, strengths, gaps, and shortcomings. The present study aims to analyze the global research topics in information science and library science, while also reviewing research topics from previous years and identifying thematic gaps. This analysis will provide a foundation for planning and policy research in this field.

The present study utilized an automated classification technique. Data analysis was performed on 85,403 articles indexed on the Web of Science website between 1945 and 2019 in the field of library and information science. The source and tool used for extracting research data was Web of Science. After preparing and pre-processing the data and formulating the classification plan for articles across 31 thematic categories, the logistic regression algorithm has been employed for the automatic classification of articles. This algorithm assigns articles to their respective thematic categories using the Cosine similarity criterion. The various stages of the research were performed using the Python 3.7 programming language and the Pandas, Numpy, NLTK, and Plotly software packages.

Most of the global research in this field is dedicated to information technology, while the field of organizational management has the least amount of research. The growth trend of research in many thematic areas is increasing. However, there is further growth in areas such as web studies, information technology, information behavior, user studies, information retrieval, and search engines. After the 1990s, popular terms such as social media, big data, virtual library, IoT (Internet of Things), machine learning, deep learning, data mining, open data, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, cloud computing, virtual reality, augmented reality, and machine translation have emerged in research in this field. It appears that the utilization of keywords pertaining to traditional subjects in the field has declined, while the usage of concepts encompassing new topics related to technology and the web has increased. The rapid growth of fields such as web development, technology, artificial intelligence, and data mining has led to the evolution of research topics and increased connections with computer science and information technology, particularly in recent years. The changes in the subjects of this field can be attributed to the development of the web and advancements in technology. Additionally, the concepts and research topics in this field have had an impact on globalization, communication progress, and overall development in various economic, social, and cultural dimensions. 

The conclusion of the study highlights the thematic trends in library and information science research over different time periods. It also identifies the weaknesses in the scientific output of this field, while outlining the evolutionary process and the path of progress and development in the field of science. Due to the fact that scientific outputs are derived from the issues, needs, and priorities of a society at any given time, studying them can help clarify the most important issues and research needs in the field of library and information science. This, in turn, can provide a foundation for identifying future research needs and subjects in the field. In other words, having a clear understanding of the subject areas of library and information science will help researchers in this field identify the most important issues and needs. This, in turn, will enable them to take appropriate actions when selecting topics for future research. By conducting needs-based research, we can lay the groundwork for policy development and research planning in this field. This approach will also help address potential challenges and problems that may arise. This is despite the fact that if the needs and issues are ignored, research resources and credits will be spent on topics that do not have the necessary priority and importance. It cannot be expected that the findings from these topics will solve the problems and pave the way for the advancement of this field.

One of the important aspects of scientific research that can provide the basis for scientific growth and development is their thematic content. Considering the importance of paying attention to the experiences of advanced countries in problem-finding and selecting research subjects, the present research aims to compare and analyze the subject trends of library and information science research at the national and international level.

A review of various studies shows that few studies have been conducted with the approach of comparing the subject trends of library and information science researches at the national level with the researches conducted in advanced countries. China (Rochester & Vakkari, 1998) and India (Dora & Kumar, 2019) were among the countries that compared national and international researches. The results showed that the research topics of this field in more advanced countries were strongly influenced by the educational, research and social structure of those countries and were very different from the research topics conducted in India. The only comparative study conducted in Iran in the field of librarianship and information science was related to (2000) Usefi, which examined the studies of more than 25 years during a limited period (two years).

The present study is of applied type and has been done with a comparative approach between the fields of national and international research. The study population includes 84875 articles indexed in Clarity Analytics database during the years 1945-2019 and 4664 Iranian articles indexed in the ISC database during the years 1972-2019 in the library and information science. The source and tool for extracting research data to review international research topics was the Clarivate Analytics database and the ISC database to review Iranian research topics. In this study, in order to develop a thematic classification plan of articles, the method of reviewing resources and to assign articles to each of the thematic categories, the method of Automatic classification, which is one of the applications of textual analysis, was used. Data analysis was performed by calculating the frequency percentage and Chi-square test and using SPSS 22 software.

The findings showed that there is a significant difference between the number of research areas of library and information science at the national and international level. Fields such as information technology, web studies, information economy, artificial intelligence, data mining, information systems, search engines, and databases were more trending among international research, and fields such as theoretical foundations, fields related to libraries and their functions, research, knowledge management, information retrieval and scientometrics were more common among Iranian researches.

During recent decades, the world has been moving towards digital and virtual space. In this space, developments such as the increase in the volume of information and the emergence of big data on the one hand and the development of information and communication technologies and artificial intelligence tools and big data processing on the other hand, have affected the level of expectations of the people of the society from the services of libraries and the organization and accessibility of information. Has set. For this reason, librarians, information specialists and managers of libraries and information centers have taken advantage of the achievements of fields related to computer science, information technology and artificial intelligence in order to face new developments and manage large amounts of data in order to transform the traditional functions of libraries. In addition, researchers in the field of information science and epistemology, especially at the international level, are more and more interested in studying and researching in the field of data science and acquiring the most up-to-date scientific achievements and knowing the latest related tools and technologies in order to play their effective role in this space. are competitive.

The results of the current research show that the field of library and information science at the international level has established a stronger relationship with other fields, especially artificial intelligence, computer science, information and communication technology. Also, at the global level, digitization processes and information growth are faster and smart technologies and tools have made more progress than third world countries and especially Iran. In other words, advanced countries due to having more economic and political power, more advanced social structure, being a leader in information and communication technology developments, more financial and spiritual support from the governments and officials of these countries for researchers and providing a suitable platform for scientific studies, access Faster access to information sources, and the appropriateness of educational and research programs with the needs and expectations of society members, have a more targeted planning to identify the problem and choose a topic in line with the real problems and needs and in sync with the developments of the day, to carry out their research. Therefore, at the international level, applied topics based on web and internet developments and information and communication technologies should face more trends and a faster growth trend than Iranian research topics.

Considering the role of studying the thematic trend of knowledge and information science research in showing the weaknesses, shortcomings and the path of progress and development of that field, the present study intends to study the topics of articles conducted by Iranian researchers at the national and international levels in this field.

The present study is applied and has been done with the approach of text mining and automated classification analysis. The study population includes articles extracted from the website of Iranian journals indexed in the ISC database during 1977-2019, and the articles done by Iranian researchers that have been indexed in the Web of Science website from 2019-1945. All preprocessing and classification processes are implemented in the Python programming language.

In order to categorize the studies of knowledge and information science, by examining the study backgrounds and combining the existing classifications and consulting experts in this field, a plan consisting of 31 subject areas was prepared and based on the analysis. The findings showed that most of the researches in this field are focused on libraries and information centers and archives; respectively; Research, study and publication; Scientometrics and informatics; and Internet and web studies. In contrast, areas of artificial intelligence; Semantic and ontological web; Information and knowledge-based society; and information systems have the least amount of research. An examination of the concepts and vocabulary used in the studies of this field showed that the word "library" in Iranian articles is the most frequent concept among other concepts in this period. Other commonly used concepts in this course include: Information, University, Science, Study, Knowledge, Management, Evaluation, Web, Library, Technology, Services, and Librarians. Among co-occurrence terms, the terms university library, public library, knowledge management, information science, information retrieval behavior, information technology, medical sciences, national library, digital library, central library, and information retrieval were among the most commonly used terms. Common use of terms such as knowledge, management, technology, knowledge management and information technology, digital, digital library, social network, information literacy, cloud computing and e-government shows the increasing attention of Iranian researchers to interdisciplinary and technology-based topics. Concepts and topics of Iranian research, especially in recent years, have undergone changes in various economic, social and cultural dimensions under the influence of web development and the development of semantic technologies, smart tools, globalization and advances in communication, and comprehensive development.

The results of the present study can help in planning and decision-making regarding recognizing educational and research needs, formulating curricula, and guiding future scientific outputs towards priorities and optimal allocation of resources to them. These results can also guide researchers in deciding to select future research topics in knowledge and information science.

The present study seeks to identify and analyze the most important events and possible events affecting the thematic process of future research in the field of information science.

The present study was conducted using resource review and Delphi methods. The research community is professors of knowledge and information science at the international and Iranian levels with study backgrounds in the field of the future of this field.

The research findings showed that 78 future events will affect the thematic process of knowledge and information science research. These events come in 6 general dimensions including teaching and learning events; Scientific and research; Innovative and technological; Social and cultural; Political and legal; And economic and employment were categorized. Among the future events, from the experts' point of view, innovative and technological events will have the greatest impact on changing the course of future research topics.

Information and communication technology is a dynamic field that has rapidly expanded its influence in most scientific fields, including knowledge and information science. It is obvious that developments due to information and communication technologies will play an important role in the content of future research in this field.

Studying and researching the challenges and research needs of entrepreneurship in knowledge and information science can help us to develop entrepreneurship in this field. In this way, the purpose of this study was to identify and categorize the important entrepreneurship research topics in knowledge and information science and measuring their importance to determine research priorities in the field.

This study was conducted as a survey, The purpose of the study was application and the nature of the research was descriptive and analytical. The study population consisted of faculty members and doctoral students of knowledge and information science in Tehran University, Kharazmi University, Al-Zahra University, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Shiraz University, University of Esfahan and Shahid Chamran University in the academic year 2016-2017. Data were collected by a questionnaire was made by researchers. To assess the formal validity of the questionnaire, the opinions of experts in the field of knowledge and information science were used and construct validity was applied to assess its validity and Pearson's correlation coefficient Cronbach's alpha was used to measure its reliability. In order to analyze the data, descriptive statistics (mean) and inferential statistics (Friedman test and t test) were used.

After reviewing the literature and experts' views, 58 research topics were identified and classified in 8 main aspects. Among the research topics identified, research priorities from the viewpoint of the studied population were included "entrepreneurship education", "research in entrepreneurship", "information technology", and "the relationship between entrepreneurship and knowledge and information science".

Results indicate that new and applied topics and topics related to information technology are more preferred than the traditional subjects and theoretical subjects for future research in this area. Research planning in order to target research topics requires identification of the most important research axes. The results of this study will help to clarify the research needs of the field of entrepreneurship in knowledge and information science.

The origin of many of the problems encountered in research in the field of knowledge and information science (such as non-applicability, repetition, and lack of innovation) relates to the uncertainty of research needs and priorities in this field. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to identify and categorize important research topics in knowledge and information science, and to measure their significance in order to determine research priorities in this field. The present research is a theoretical-practical type and a research method-analytical and survey method. The research population consists of faculty and doctoral students in the field of knowledge and information science in the universities of Tehran, kharazmi University, Al-Zahra University, Mashhad Ferdowsi University, Shiraz university, University of Esfahan and Shahid Chamran University in the academic year 2015-2016. Due to the limited research community (165 persons), a questionnaire was distributed among all the people in the distribution community (electronically and in person) and finally 112 questionnaires were collected (return rate 63%). For data analysis, inferential statistics (Friedman rank test) have been used. In order to identify of research priorities in knowledge and information science, the contents of this field and the opinion of the faculty of this field have been reviewed. The results of these studies identified 120 topics in the knowledge and information science that were divided into 22 general axes. The results indicate that it has been influenced by the developments that have taken place in recent years in the field of knowledge and information science, including changing the title of the field and, to some extent, changing the syllabus and, consequently, the content of the field, the changes caused by The entry of technology into the field and the further movement of this field into interdiscipline have caused the current research community to focus on new and applied topics, future topics and issues related to information technology to traditional topics and theoretical topics for doing. Future research in this field will have a higher priority.