KCI vs. WoS: Comparative Analysis of Korean and International Journal Publications in Library and Information Science

Abstract

The study analyzed bibliometric data of papers published in Korea Citation Index (KCI) and Web of Science (WoS) journals from 2002 to 2021. After examining size differences of KCI and WoS domains in the number of authors, institutions, and journals to put publication and citations counts in perspective, the study investigated co-authorship patterns over time to compare collaboration trends of Korean and international scholars and analyzed the data at author, institution, and journal levels to explore how the influences of authors, institutions, and journals on research output differ across domains. The study also conducted frequency-based analysis of keywords to identify key topics and visualized keyword clusters to examine topic trends. The result showed Korean LIS authors to be twice as productive as international authors but much less impactful and Korean institutions to be at comparable levels of productivity and impact in contrast to much of productivity and impact concentrated in top international institutions. Citations to journals exhibited initially increasing pattern followed by a decreasing trend though WoS journals showed far more variance than KCI journals. Co-authorship trends were much more pronounced among international publication, where larger collaboration groups suggested multi-disciplinary and complex nature of international LIS research. Keyword analysis found continuing diversification of topics in international research compared to relatively static topic trend in Korea. Keyword visualization showed WoS keyword clusters to be much denser and diverse than KCI clusters. In addition, key keyword clusters of WoS were quite different from each other unlike KCI clusters which were similar.