Systematic Review of Scientific Collaboration Networks of Library and Information Sciences in Iran

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to review the characteristics of collaboration and co-authorship networks of Iranian researchers in the field of library and information science (LIS). This was a systematic review. The research population consisted of articles that have studied the scientific collaboration networks of LIS with social network analysis (SNA) method. Articles were retrieved from the science edition and social science edition databases of ISI Web of Science (maintained by Clarivate Analytics), Scopus (provided by Elsevier), Irandoc (Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology), Magiran, and the SID (Scientific Information Database), Civilica Scientific Database, and ISC (Islamic World Science Citation Database). The inclusion criteria were to study the Iranian co-authorship networks with micro and macro indicators. The time and language constraints were not applied to the data selection. Studies from the SNA for words co-occurrence in LIS vocabulary were excluded. PRISMA was used for the data selection process and JBI's Critical Appraisal Tool was used to assess the data quality. The findings of the study showed that density of co-authorship network in LIS articles is low and the universities of Iran, Tehran and Shiraz are more centralized and closer than other universities in the network. This study suggests Iranian researchers in the field of library and information science increase their scientific collaboration in their scientific production at national and international levels.

Keywords: Information Science, Scholarly Communication, Social Networking, Scientometrics