The impact of knowledge exports from librarianship and
information science (LIS)
Investigating cross-disciplinary citations
Rachel Hessey
What is the external influence of the interdisciplinary field of LIS?
Identifying exports to other subject areas
Rank Subject categoryCitation count
% of exports
1 Computer Science, Interdisciplinary 216 20.42 Chemistry, Multidisciplinary 164 15.53 Computer Science, Information Systems 159 15.04 Chemistry, Medicinal 105 9.95 Pharmacology & Pharmacy 102 9.66 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology 72 6.87 Public, Environ. & Occup. Health 57 5.48 Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence 55 5.29 Educational & Educational Research 39 3.7
10 Biochemical Research Methods 38 3.611 Health Care Sciences & Services 37 3.5
12Biophysics 34 3.2Computer Sci., Software Engineering 34 3.2
13 Communication 33 3.1
• Dominance of science subject areas
• Bulk exports from single articles, authors or institutions
• Single citations from very high impact journals Genuine impact =
High citation count x impact factor
Citations to a range of LIS research
Patterns in the results – citing journals
Patterns in the results – cited journalsLIS journals v. non-LIS journals•Non-LIS = higher citation counts•Non-LIS = higher % above average impact factors•Differing subject destinations for exports
Publication of LIS research in non-LIS
journals leads to higher impact exports
Implications
• Exported knowledge achieving significant influence
• Pre-publication export to maximise impact?
• Impact factors, once normalised, are an effective means of quantifying export value
• Using author to assign disciplinarity can be misleading
Hessey, R. & Willett, P. (2013) Quantifying the value of knowledge
exports from librarianship and information science research
Journal of Information Science 39, 1, 141-150
