Paradigm Shift in the Studies on the Interactive Information Retrieval: A Scientometric Study at the Web of Science

The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in the approach of interactive information retrieval studies from the decade 1990 to 2020 and drawing the co-word map based on the articles indexed in the Web of Science. 

The research has been done by a quantitative method, scientometric indicators and social network analysis. 10.294 sources were identified by searching the interactive information retrieval in the Web of Science database. Finally, 154 articles in the category of library and information science were analyzed. There was no specific timeframe for the search and data were retrieved from 1990 to 2020. SPSS and VOSviewer software package were used for data analysis.

The research findings indicated that since 2001, the scientific production of this field has started to grow and in 2016 reached the maximum number of articles, In fact, this growth trend peaked in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Also, Pia Borland, Iris Xie and Amanda Spink are highly-cited authors in the field of interactive information retrieval. Most of the studied literature focused on information behavior issues, attention to individual user differences, search process, search strategies, search function and information system design, query expansion and relevance. The paradigm shift of studies has from user attention, relevance feedback, and consequentialism to attention to the search process and related topics such as attention to individual differences in users, search strategies, search performance, search process, and query reformulation. In other words, focus of interactive information retrieval studies has changed from the outcome of search to search process and what happens in the search session. The findings of Ward's hierarchical clustering also resulted in the formation of three clusters, including "web search", "information seeking behavior" and "human-machine interaction". 

Investigating the content of information sources produced in the field of interactive information retrieval helps identify scientific production trends and change paradigm studies in this field.