An analytical look at the topic of digital libraries in the Web of Science database from the beginning until now

A digital library is an online database that is a collection of texts, audio, images, digital documents or other digital media formats that can be accessed through the Internet.The purpose of this study is to analyze and evaluate the status of digital libraries in the Web of Science database.

In this study, the Web of Science database was used with scientometric method, bibliography and illustration. Until the end of 2023, keywords related to digital libraries are selected from the mesh (medical subject headings) and then by searching the Web of Science database, relevant global scientific publications are extracted in CSV format and using citation analysis techniques and Data analysis and visualization were done with the help of Excel and VOSviewer software.

A total of 67,676 documents were indexed by world researchers about the subject area of digital library in this database. The average citation per document was 14.47 and the average h-index of the retrieved publications was 113. Most of the published documents were original articles in English. University of Michigan is the most cited most productive organization and Manjunath, bs is the most cited author. The most cooperation was with the researchers of the United States of America. The keyword of digital libraries had the most repetition among the used keywords.

The results of the study showed that at the international level, the process of publishing and citing related documents and articles is the subject of digital libraries.