Literature growth, journal characteristics, and author productivity in subject indexing, 1977 to 2000

• Published in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Vol. 55; no. 1; pp. 64 - 73
• Main Author: Tsay, Ming-yueh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 01.01.2004; Wiley; Wiley Periodicals Inc
• Subjects: Abstracting; Abstracts; Author productivity; Authors; Bibliometrics; Bibliometrics. Scientometrics. Evaluation; Bradford's Law of Scatter; Core making; Data processing; Exact sciences and technology; Indexing; Information and communication sciences; Information processing; Information retrieval; Information science. Documentation; Information storage; Information systems; Libraries; Library and information science; Library and information science periodicals; Library and information science. General aspects; Library associations; Library science; Literature; Lotka's Law; Periodicals; Perl; Productivity; S curves; Science; Sciences and techniques of general use; Software; Studies; Subject indexing; Vocabularies & taxonomies; Writers; New York; United States > US; Taiwan; Scientific literature; Zipf law; Bibliometrics; Growth; Periodical; Bradford law; Indexing; Author productivity
• ISSN: 1532-2882; 2330-1635; 1532-2890; 2330-1643
• DOI: 10.1002/asi.10346

This study employed the Perl program, Excel software, and some bibliometric techniques to investigate growth pattern, journal characteristics, and author productivity of the subject indexing literature from 1977 to 2000, based on the subject search of a descriptor field in the Library and Information Science s (LISA) database. The literature growth from 1977 to 2000 in subject indexing could be fitted well by the logistic curve. The Bradford plot of journal literature fits the typical Bradford‐Zipf S‐shaped curve. Twenty core journals making a significant contribution could be identified from the Bradford‐Zipf distribution. Four major research topics in the area of subject indexing were identified as: (1) information organization, (2) information processing, (3) information storage and retrieval, and (4) information systems and services. It was also found that a vast majority of authors (76.7%) contributed only one article, which is a much larger percentage than the 60% of original Lotka's data. The 15 most productive authors and the key concepts of their research were identified.