2018 copyright

2018 Copyright © Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information

Editorial Board

Co-Editors-in-ChiefGary Marchionini

University of North Carolina, USADong-Geun Oh

Keimyung University, Korea

Associate EditorKiduk Yang

Kyungpook National University, Korea

Managing EditorHea Lim Rhee

Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Korea

Beeraka Ramesh BabuUniversity of Madras, India

Pia BorlundUniversity of Copenhagen, Denmark

France BouthillierMcGill University, Canada

Kathleen BurnettFlorida State University, USA

Boryung JuLouisiana State University, USA

Noriko KandoNational Institute of Informatics, Japan

Shailendra KumarUniversity of Delhi, India

Mallinath KumbarUniversity of Mysore, India

Fenglin LiWuhan University, China

Thomas MandlUniversiät Hildesheim, Germany

Lokman I. MehoAmerican University of Beirut, Lebanon

Jin Cheon NaNanyang Technological University, Singapore

Dan O’ConnorRutgers University, USA

Alice R. RobbinIndiana University, USA

Christian SchloeglUniversity of Graz, Austria

Ou ShiyanNanjing University, China

Paul SolomonUniversity of South Carolina, USA

Ina FourieUniversity of Pretoria, South Africa

Helen PartridgeUniversity of Southern Queensland, Australia

Sujin ButdisuwanMahasarakham University, Thailand

Folker CaroliUniversität Hildesheim, Germany

Seon Heui ChoiKorea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Korea

Eungi KimKeimyung University, Korea

Joy KimUniversity of Southern California, USA

Kenneth KleinUniversity of Southern California, USA

M. KrishnamurthyDRTC, Indian Statistical Institute, India

S.K. Asok KumarThe Tamil Nadu Dr

Ambedkar Law University, India

Hur-Li LeeUniversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA

P. RajendranSRM University, India

B. RameshaBangalore University, India

Soo Young RiehUniversity of Michigan, USA

Taesul SeoKorea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Korea

Tsutomu ShihotaSt. Andrews University, Japan

Ning YuUniversity of Kentucky, USA

Editorial Board Consulting Editors

Table of Contents

JISTaP Vol. 6 No. 1 March 30, 2018Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice • http://www.jistap.org

2018 Copyright © Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information

Articles 06

Call for Paper 83

Information for Authors 84

Interlinking Open Government Data in Korea using Administrative District Knowledge Graph- Haklae Kim

18

Measurement of Global Nursing Research Output: A Bibliometric Study (1996-2015)- Shivendra Singh, Ramesh Pandita

31

Synchronous and Asynchronous Engagement in Virtual Library Services as Learning Support Systems from the Perspectives of Post-Graduate Students: A Case Study- Reysa Alenzuela, Yelizaveta Kamilova

45

Citation Impact of Collaboration from Intra- and Inter-disciplinary Perspectives: A Case Study of Korea- Jae Yun Lee, EunKyung Chung

65

Knowledge Management Initiative: A Case Study of the National Library of Bangladesh- Nazmin Sultana, SK Mamun Mostofa

06

6ⓒ Nazmin Sultana, SK Mamun Mostofa, 2018

Knowledge Management Initiative: A Case Study of the National Library of Bangladesh

Open Access

Accepted date: November 25, 2017Received date: October 4, 2017

*Corresponding Author: SK Mamun MostofaAssistant ProfessorDepartment of Information Science and Library ManagementUniversity of Dhaka, BangladeshEmail: [email protected]

All JISTaP content is Open Access, meaning it is accessible onlineto everyone, without fee and authors’ permission. All JISTaP content is published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http:/ creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Under this license, authors reserve the copyright for their content; however, they permit anyone to unrestrictedly use, distribute, and reproduce the content in any medium as far as the original authors and source are cited. For any reuse, redistribution, or reproduction of a work, users must clarify the license terms under which the work was produced.

ABSTRACTThis paper confers about the implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) in the National Library of Bangla-desh (NLB). The main aim of this study was to investigate how the NLB goes about creating, implementing, dissem-inating, and applying knowledge within the organization. The other objectives of this paper were to identify the current status of KM in NLB and the understanding of different facets of KM by the staff of the National Library. The paper revealed that the situation of KM in NLB is not satisfactory. The paper also described the fact that the working environment supports the implementation but there needs to be some changes in the policies. Finally the research disclosed that NLB is a great place for implementing KM and has a large amount of possibilities for the adoption of KM. This qualitative research used the questionnaire as the main instrument for data collection. Finally, data has been processed and analyzed using SPSS and MS Excel.

Keywords: Knowledge Management (KM), National Library of Bangladesh (NLB), Bangladesh

Nazmin SultanaDepartment of Information Science and Library ManagementUniversity of Dhaka, BangladeshEmail: [email protected]

SK Mamun Mostofa *Department of Information Science and Library ManagementUniversity of Dhaka, BangladeshEmail: [email protected]

JISTaPJournal of Information Science Theory and Practice

http://www.jistap.org Research PaperJ Inf Sci Theory Pract 6(1): 06-17, 2018http://dx.doi.org/10.1633/JISTaP.2018.6.1.1eISSN : 2287-4577 pISSN : 2287-9099

7

Knowledge Management Initiative

http://www.jistap.org

1. INTRODUCTION

KM (Knowledge Management) is the process of capturing, creating, developing, storing, sharing, and effectively using organizational knowledge. It refers to the practices used by organizations to achieve the goals of that organization. Nowadays the library and informa-tion institution has become the learning organization in which users can discover the way to capture and share tacit and explicit knowledge (Husain & Nazim, 2013). The NLB was established in 1972. A national library is an organization to develop and maintain a comprehen-sive national collection, to ensure easy access of citizens to that collection, and to help to collect and preserve in-tellectual property. This study also presents a theoretical framework for advanced research to examine the prob-lems and prospects of implementing KM in the NLB.

This is the age of information technology. No one can compete without proper utilization of knowledge. KM enhances the innovation and creation of better ideas. These innovative ideas will help to build a sound orga-nizational behavior among staff. It is not a new concept, as since 1991 it is an established discipline. The journey of KM was not a bed of roses. In 1999 the term “Personal KM” was introduced, which refers to the management of knowledge at the individual level. KM lets employees get acquainted with productivity. KM will help to gain opportunities for the betterment of people as well as organizations, but only when they are substantive and have definite aim. KM is useful in every sector of an organization. The major advantage of KM is that in-formation is easily shared between the employees and members of that organization. Knowledge is power, but has little value unless it can be easily accessed and put into practice (Gallant, 2015). Every success needs prop-er management and a systematic way to go ahead. KM gradually leads to development if people have a tenden-cy to maintain the process. As Wenger (2004) notes, “KM will never work until corporations realize it’s not about how you capture knowledge but how you create and leverage it.”

According to Drucker (1959), a knowledge worker “works primarily with information or develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.” Everybody can use knowledge in their workplace or whenever necessary only by following some criteria. After maintaining those criteria or techniques of using knowledge people will

find the magic. Since the ancient period mankind is trying to make a better place for themselves and their future generation. All of them need proper utilization of knowledge and to make all of the things as resources. We have potentiality and it is very important. We cannot overlook the importance of KM in our daily life. From the beginning to the end of a cycle that requires the pur-pose of gaining some gorgeous aim, KM is a crucial. It is very important to understand what KM actually is, and what is knowledge, data, and information. Data is the raw material and information requires structured data.

1.1. Problem StatementKM in libraries should be focused on effectual

knowledge and precious research and its improvement, knowledge base edifice, knowledge sharing among library staffs, staff training, and hastening explicit pro-cessing of the implicit knowledge and recognizing of its sharing (Shanhong, 2000). However, this study deals with the problem of how to exploit knowledge as a com-petitive benefit and how to become a knowledge based organization. A knowledge based organization is one that harnesses human capital to enable the institution to achieve a competitive advantage to attain strategic objectives. The National Library like any other organiza-tions in Bangladesh right now has Internet connections, intranet, and even has its own web portal, but are these facilities being fully utilized to facilitate the process of managing knowledge in the organization? Evaluating the working environment of the organization will help us identify these problems.

2. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The prime aim of this study is to investigate how the NLB goes about creating, implementing, disseminating, and applying knowledge within the organization. The specific objectives are to:

1. Reveal the level of understanding of KM among the staff of NLB

2. Identify that the working atmosphere supports the execution of KM in the library

3. Disclose that knowledge sharing practices occur among the staff

4. Discover the challenges associated with KM prac-tices

JISTaP Vol.6 No.1, 06-17

8

5. Provide some recommendations for better imple-menting KM at NLB

2.1. Brief History and Future Plan of NLBAfter the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 the

Government of Pakistan established the National Li-brary of Pakistan in Karachi in 1962, and a provincial book deposit branch of the Pakistan National Library was established in Dhaka in 1967. In fact, the book de-posit branch is the embryo of the NLB, which came into being after the independence of the country in 1971. After the Liberation War of Bangladesh it was keenly felt by all quarters that a National Library is indispens-able for the newborn nation. Considering the necessity and importance, the Government of the People’s Repub-lic of Bangladesh resolved to set up the NLB in Dhaka. The library started functioning with the manpower and resource materials inherited from the Provincial Book Deposit Branch in Dhaka. Later on, in 1972 the two national wings, namely the National Archives of Bangladesh and NLB started functioning in the name of the Directorate of Archives and Libraries under the Sports and Culture Division, Ministry of Education (NLB, 2016). The NLB received a large collection from various government organizations, and foreign sources like UNESCO, the World Bank, and ILO. The national library has a great collection of books and its amount is like 400,000. There are rare books and manuscripts and about 100,000 copies of journal articles. It has also a huge collection of books, journals, and manuscripts as donated items. The National Encyclopedia of Bangla-desh (Banglapedia) has shown that the national library of Bangladesh has a good collection of Urdu, Arabic, and Persian books as well as manuscripts and a large number of old maps of Bangladesh and of the Indian subcontinent. There is a seven story air-conditioned stack block and this building is very unique in its de-sign. When visiting the library it is found to be very well equipped with modern facilities. The staff of NLB are very careful to handle all of the resources.

NLB is the biggest platform of the library sector in Bangladesh. NLB has different kinds of users who visit the library almost every day. After this study the higher authority of NLB will understand the necessity of imple-menting KM properly because they know and believe that KM is helpful and also the working atmosphere of NLB may support the execution of KM. So, they will

take initiative to make readers understand the current status and future plan for the library environment re-garding the KM in Bangladesh. During the completion of this study the officers of NLB shared some of their future plan, like they are interested in doing analysis on the previous condition of the library and current condi-tions after implementing KM properly. They believe that KM will definitely change the environment of the li-brary and also bring users to explore more fruitful ways to implement it in their personal life too. As the leader of the library in Bangladesh, NLB wants collaboration with the other information institutions of the country and to spread the message of KM to the whole country. NLB also wants to increase the acceptance of the library to the user more positively through the process of KM.

2.2. History of KMDr. Karl Wiig has a very important role in the jour-

ney of KM. One of the first books dedicated to KM was written by him, KM Foundations. A number of man-agement theorists have contributed to the evolution of KM, among them such notables as Peter Drucker, Paul Strassmann, and Peter Senge in the United States. Drucker and Strassmann have stressed the growing im-portance of information and explicit knowledge as or-ganizational resources. Senge has focused on the “learn-ing organization” as “a cultural dimension of managing knowledge” (Thomas, 1995).

Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) studied how knowledge is produced, used, and diffused within organizations and how this contributes to the diffusion of innovation. In parallel, there were many key developments in in-formation technologies devoted to knowledge-based systems: expert systems that aimed at capturing experts on a diskette; intelligent tutoring systems aimed at cap-turing teachers on a diskette; and artificial intelligence approaches that gave rise to knowledge engineering, someone tasked with acquiring knowledge from subject matter experts, conceptually modeling this content, and then translating it into machine-executable code (Briggs, 1989).

3. LITERATURE REVIEW

A literature review is nothing but an evaluation and integration of the previous research. But it is not a

9



complete research or collection of some data, quotes, or information. Before conducting this research, there is a need to find out what has already been done in the KM sector. And after that, there is a need to study thorough-ly those papers.

According to Davenport and Prusak (1998), most knowledge management projects have one of three aims: (1) to make knowledge visible and show the role of knowledge in an organization, mainly through maps, yellow pages, and hypertext tools; (2) to devel-op a knowledge-intensive culture by encouraging and aggregating behaviors such as knowledge sharing (as opposed to hoarding) and proactively seeking and offering knowledge; and (3) to build a knowledge in-frastructure—not only a technical system, but a web of connections among people given space, time, tools, and encouragement to interact and collaborate.

Che Rusuli (2012) in their paper clearly stated that the environment in which academic libraries operate is changing. While facing challenges and opportunities academic libraries need to come up with a response in order to better serve the needs of the academic commu-nity. One way to do this is by engaging in practices of

knowledge management; this is, create, capture, share, and use knowledge to achieve the goals of the library.

Tseng and Fan (2011) carried out a study on “Ex-ploring the influence of organizational ethical climate on KM” by following some arguments about the asso-ciation between KM and organizational culture, and then further adopting the perspective of organizational ethical climates to explore its influence on knowledge practices.

Islam, Siddike, and Naznin (2015) in their paper iden-tified that information professionals’ perceptions of KM concepts were narrow and focused primarily on man-agement of explicit knowledge. They also mentioned that, like business or profit making organizations, KM is also applicable to LIS in Bangladesh but in practice.

Kwan and Balasubramanian (2003) in their paper de-scribed the development and implementation of a KM strategy called process-oriented KM in a real-life global company. They also mentioned that most knowledge repositories store documents organized by subject areas. In process-oriented KM, each KM project is developed around an organizational process and the mission, ra-tionale, and objectives of the process define the scope of

Fig. 1 Development phase in KM history (Source: Sultana, 2017)

Personalization (2000+)

Virtualization (1980)

Computerization(1950)

Communications (1900)

Transportation (1850)

Industrialization (1800)


10

the project. This process orientation is justified by the fact that process knowledge is believed to be the source of the core competences of an organization.

Mostofa and Islam (2015) carried out research to find out the “Challenges and opportunities of KM in the university library: A case study of Dhaka University library in Bangladesh.” The purpose of their study was to find out the challenges and opportunities associated with KM practices in Dhaka University Library (DUL). The findings indicate that limited expertise and lack of clear guidelines are the major challenges for the imple-mentation of KM in DUL.

Sivankalai and Thulasi (2012) made findings on TQM (Total Quality Management) in academic libraries with a view of examining the exposure of library profession-als. Besides, the study aimed to highlight the problems encountered by professionals and suggests some mea-sures for its improvements. The authors investigate the professionals through a survey based on structure ques-tionnaire. Various statistical methods have been used for data analysis. The study confirmed that professionals are aware of attending the various types of conferences, seminars, workshops, and programs, and colleges should conduct some library events and programs.

Hamid and Nayan (2005) declared that the changing role of librarians as knowledge managers emphasizes the need to constantly update or acquire new skills and knowledge to remain relevant to today’s library environ-ment. Libraries may need to restructure their functions, and expand their role and responsibilities to effectively contribute and meet the needs of a large and diverse group of community and users. They also discussed a preliminary study of KM in the National Library of Ma-laysia.

Ugwu and Ezema (2010) carried out research on “Competencies for successful KM applications in Ni-gerian academic libraries” and reveal that all the KM leadership skills identified are found to be essential. The most essential KM leadership requirement is trust-worthy skills. Other essential leadership skills for KM are participative decision making skills, collaborative skills, change management skills, innovative skills, and communicative skills. This is not surprising because the literature reveals that the success of KM in an organiza-tion depends on the extent of top management support for the organization’s leadership qualities.

In this study the literature review helped us to find

the depth of KM and its implementation. It took a long time to discover various related paper on KM. Some ob-stacles were arising when doing this review, for example, generating an exact summary of a research work. It is not so easy a task to find the inner gist of the work that is done by other scholars regarding this field. The area of Knowledge Management is vast. There were many pre-vious research efforts relating to it. Some research was about the introduction of KM to libraries and some was about business sectors. Also, some research was held on challenges and opportunities of KM in the academic li-brary; some on exploring its influence in organizational aspects; some about discovering the strategies and role of KM; and also about competencies for successful KM applications, and so on. This current paper attempts to describe the adoption and implementation of KM.

4. METHODOLOGY

As a sample of the present study the employees of NLB were selected. There are 98 staff members in the national library and archives (12 first class officers, 1 second class, 50 third class, and 35 fourth class). The deputy director of the library, bibliographer, program-mer, microfilm officer, and research officers were select-ed as the sample for the study because of their role and authoritative power for the building of the library. For the data collection case study method was used. A case study is a systematic way of gathering information from a sample for the purpose of constructing an analysis. It is about a person, group, or situation that has been studied over time. This case study was about the imple-mentation and behavior of the employees towards KM. This study describes the overall attitude of employees regarding the concept of KM and of course its imple-mentation. Data analysis has largely been conducted on responses to the questionnaire that was distributed at the NLB. The questionnaire was made up of close-end-ed questions with responses ranging from YES/NO and option based questions in which the respondents were required to choose the options. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Descriptive and inferential statistics such as tables and percentages were used in the data analysis.

11



5. DATA ANALYSIS OF THE STUDY

The following are the findings from the questionnaire survey.

Figure 2 indicates that among 11 officials of the NLB, 10 (91%) were male and only 1 (9%) was female. Here we can see that there is discrimination between male and female employees.

Table 2 indicates that the largest group of respondents, i.e. 6 (54.5%) are comprised of the ages between 36-41

years in the NLB. And two other age groups consist of equal percentages, i.e. 18.2%. Only one respondent, i.e. 9.1% belongs from the age group in between 30-35.

In this question the respondents were asked to rate their levels of familiarity of KM with a five point Likert scale measuring from ‘very low’ to ‘very high.’ From a total of 11 officials of the NLB the maximum number of officials, i.e. 7 (63.6%) are seen to have rated themselves as “highly familiar with KM.” The rest, 4 (36.4%) have rated themselves as “moderate with KM.”

Fig. 2 Representing gender

Fig. 3 Representing age group of respondents

91%

9%

GenderMale

Female

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

036-41

6

54.50%

18.20% 18.20%

9.10%

42-47

2

48-53

2

30-35

1

Percentage

Frequency


12

The respondents were asked regarding their think-ing about KM. A great number of respondents, i.e. 6 (54.5%) from the NLB answered that KM can change or improve organizational atmosphere. And the other part of the respondents, i.e. 3 (27.3%) replied that KM is all about information management. The lowest amount of frequency, i.e. 2 (18.2%) of respondents think that KM is based on the business field.

In this part of the questionnaire the respondents were asked whether they have any idea about explicit and tacit knowledge, or not. The table shows that all of the participants, i.e. 11 (100%) have an idea on explicit and tacit knowledge.

As there is no section for dealing with KM in the NLB, Table 3 identifies that the present scenario of KM in NLB is not good, i.e. 36.4%; whereas the same num-ber of participants, i.e; 36.4% said that the present sce-nario of KM in NLB is good. The rest, 27.2%, said that the NLB is practicing KM nicely.

Table 4 showed that 45.4% of the participants identi-fied that the strategy for implementing KM in the NLB needs to follow the KM process. 27.3% of the officials identified that strategies for implementing KM in NLB also require letting employees build co-ordination by managing knowledge. The rest of the officials, i.e. 27.3% answered that making an atmosphere to share tacit

0 3 61 4 72 5

36.40

63.60High

Moderate4

7

Percentage

Frequency

Fig. 4 Showing the level of familiarity with KM

Table 1. Level of Thought

Level of thought Frequency Percentage

Something that can change or improve organizational atmosphere 6 54.5%

All about information management 3 27.3%

It is specially based on the business field 2 18.2%

Total 11 100.0%

13



Table 2. Knowledge about Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

Having Knowledge Frequency Percentage

Yes 11 100%

No 0 0%

Total 11 100%

Table 3. Present Scenario of KM in NLB

Present scenario Frequency Percentage

Not good 4 36.4%

Good 4 36.4%

Well-practiced 3 27.2%

Total 11 100%

Table 4. Strategy for Implementing KM

Strategy Frequency Percentage

Following the KM process 5 45.4%

Letting employees build co-ordination by managing knowledge 3 27.3%

Making atmosphere to share tacit knowledge among employees 3 27.3%

Total 11 100%

Table 5. Status of Sharing Knowledge With Colleague

Options Frequency Percentage

Yes 5 45.5%

Sometimes 5 45.5%

No 1 9.0%

Total 11 100%


14

Table 6. Barriers in KM

Barriers Frequency Percentage

Unwillingness to discover the challenges associated with KM 5 45.4%

Lack of awareness 4 36.4%

Feeling shy in nature to share knowledge 2 18.2%

Total 11 100%

knowledge among employee is another strategy for im-plementing KM.

Table 5 indicates that about 45.5% of officers of the NLB share their knowledge with colleagues. More than 45% of officers share their knowledge sometimes. Only 9.0% of them responded negatively.

In another part of the questionnaire that is indicated by table 6, the participants were asked to point out the barriers regarding this field. Among the participants, 45.4% of the officers pointed out the option of unwill-ingness to discover the challenges associated with KM as a barrier to KM. About 4 (36.4%) officers pointed out that lack of awareness is also a barrier to KM. Feeling shy in nature to share knowledge with others among employees was another barrier in KM, and its frequency was 2 (18.2%).

6. MAJOR FINDINGS OF THE STUDY

The prime aim of this study was to investigate how the NLB goes about creating, implementing, disseminating, and applying knowledge within the organization, and also to reveal the level of understanding of KM among the staff of the NLB. The research aimed at identifying the working atmosphere to support the execution of KM. For examining in order to find out systems used in the NLB to capture the knowledge created, some mea-sures were used in this study:

1. A maximum number of respondents from the NLB stated that their level of familiarity with KM is high and 36.4% were seen to identify that it is at a moderate level.

2. It is seen that the majority of the participants have said that KM is something that can change or im-prove organizational atmosphere, whereas 27.3% of them think KM is all about information man-agement. The rest of the respondents have the idea that KM is basically in the business field.

3. A majority of the officers of the NLB have an idea about explicit and tacit knowledge.

4. The officials think that KM will meet the needs of an organization to gain its objectives and they re-plied positively, and its number was 100%.

5. The study revealed that their organization supports the process of KM.

6. It is seen that a maximum number of the employ-ees have stated that KM can play a significant role to achieve the best output of their organization such as increasing employee development, im-proving delivery, and better decision making, re-spectively.

7. A majority of the respondents replied that policies and procedures regarding KM are important and relevant in their organization.

8. The study found that only explicit knowledge is gathered and tacit knowledge is difficult to pre-serve.

9. The research paper revealed that the NLB has no different section/division dealing with KM.

10. A maximum number of employees of the NLB have found KM interesting in practice.

11. A majority of the respondents have replied that the present scenario of KM in NLB is not good; at the same time, the same ratio of the participants said that the present scenario of KM in NLB is

15



good. A maximum number of officers of the NLB believe that effective knowledge utilization will bring great benefit to their organization.

12. A majority of the officers stated that they share knowledge with others and a few of them replied negatively. The rest of them said that sometimes they share knowledge with colleagues.

13. Finally, the majority of the respondents have told us that unwillingness to discover the challenges associated with KM is the main barrier to imple-menting KM. A few of them identified that lack of awareness and feeling shy in nature are the others barriers to sharing knowledge.

7. PROBLEMS

Research is such a thing that finds out the problems of a specific factor or field or things. During the time of doing this work, some problems were found, although the NLB is a well-established institution and the em-ployees are skilled. At the present time KM is a very important subject that should be used in the library. But it is a matter of sorrow that there is no division/section regarding KM in the NLB. The employees have knowl-edge about KM but the process of implementation is very poor. Lack of awareness, unwillingness, and inade-quate training are the problems here in the NLB.

8. RECOMMENDATIONS

The NLB is one of the most important institutions for creating a better generation. Books are the real things that can give a person immense knowledge. A knowl-edgeable person is an asset for the nation. The library can follow the process of KM, and it would be a great help to them to provide better services to the user. This research work provides the following recommendations for better adoption and implementation of KM in the NLB.

A. Creating awareness: The very first point is to create awareness among employees about the effectiveness regarding KM. KM is essential for any kind of organization, especially for libraries. The process of KM can make the library a better service center for providing service to the user.

Having good awareness will let the employees know about the KM process and they can realize the usefulness of KM.

B. Sharing knowledge with colleagues: The culture of sharing knowledge with colleagues will increase the process of KM more effectively. Tacit knowl-edge is a hidden treasure. When the employees start to share their knowledge with others the at-mosphere of the institution definitely changes and become a better one.

C. Division/section dealing with KM: In a library or any other institution there are different divisions or sections dealing with specific work. It is very important because different types of work related to the institution need to be done separately. A library has acquisition, processing, circulation, reference, and so many other sections according to the management and other activities regarding it. But in the NLB there is no section dealing with KM. As KM is very necessary for the library and it has some process to be maintained by the em-ployees of the library it will be helpful to create a division or section for doing the work and making the KM process more effective.

D. Recording knowledge: This sounds a little un-usual, but there is no such a thing that remains unusual. Once people start to practice something day by day they will definitely become getting used to it. A human being is precious and valu-able knowledge remains in their mind. Whenever someone says something useful and delivers a lecture or some small talk related to the library it need to be recorded by the person who will be responsible for the KM section. For example, sometimes scholarly people do a visit in the NLB, and/or a seminar or conference can be held there, and then the unpublished knowledge that they do share in the library can be recorded.

E. Making a friendly atmosphere: For the purpose of management of a company or institution it is not always possible to be friendly to the employee. KM allows people to share their knowledge. So the library authority should make a friendly at-mosphere inside the library so that the employee will not feel hesitation to share innovative ideas or knowledge that comes to his or her mind.

F. Discovering challenges: There are some challeng-


16

es in the field of KM. Every step needs to be very clear and careful. The employees of the NLB need be more knowledgeable and should discover the challenges relating to KM. After finding out the challenges they should find the possible solutions together and make KM successful to gain the ob-jectives of the library.

G. Various training programs: As KM is a multidisci-plinary field and employees are not very educated about KM, the library can arrange some training programs. KM adoption and implementation is not so easy a task for establishment. Primarily, training can provide help to the employees.

H. Networking: Networking is a vast thing. Here net-working refers to the employees using the Inter-net, making the website lucrative, updating it at a regular basis, posting important notices, building better co-ordination among the employees, and so on.

9. CONCLUSION

KM practice is the best way to transfer and share knowledge and it can be done easily by library profes-sionals if they will give a positive attitude to this field. The findings of this study can be applied in the NLB among their employees and will make something bet-ter for the environment of the NLB. We hope that the findings will help not only the NLB, but also provide some new facts toward the other libraries in Bangla-desh. Every study shows a way for further research. This research will also contribute in KM related research. KM is a broad concept that is frequently developing and its process is ongoing. Therefore adoption and imple-mentation of KM into the NLB or other libraries will be a great improvement. Proper training programs and a positive attitude regarding KM will make the library or other educational as well as business organizations a better one. KM is already applied in the business field. They follow the process of KM and are doing great. The library is another most important organization that helps the nation to build up a better generation. So, KM is a must followed process here. The NLB is a place where most of the employees have knowledge about KM. But there is no different section regarding KM. The employees can feel the necessity of KM and they have

realized that following the processes of KM will help the institution to gain its objectives. This study also suggests some future research regarding the implementation of KM in NLB; like, the use of KM tools among the user as well as the employees of the NLB, introducing social networking sites to the user for implementing KM, and development of information systems in the NLB for the implementation of KM.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We express our deepest thanks to the officers of the NLB who gave their valuable time to make this research successful.

REFERENCES

Briggs, J. (1989). Knowledge management in theory and practice. London: Elsevier.

Carrol, J. M., Choo, C. W., & Dunlap, D. R. (2003). Knowledge management support for teachers. Ed-ucational Technology Research and Development, 51(4), 42-64.

Che Rusuli, M. S., Tasmin, R., & Takala, J. (2012). The impact of structural approach on knowledge man-agement practice (KMP) at Malaysian University Libraries. Australian Journal of Basic &Applied Sci-ence, 6(10), 122-128.

Davenport, T. H., & Prusak, L. (1998). Working knowl-edge. Harvard Business School Press.

Davies, M. (1995). Two notions of implicit rules. Philo-sophical Perspectives, 9, 153–83.

Drucker, P. (2008). Enterprise 2.0 implementation. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Edwards, J. (2011). A process view of knowledge man-agement: It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(4), 297-306.

Gallant, M. (2015). Why knowledge management mat-ters. Talent Management Blog, August 2015, 15-17.

Hamid, S., & Nyan, J. M. (2005). Preliminary study of knowledge management in a library: A case study of the National Library of Malaysia (pp. 14-16). Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaysia.

Hedlund, G. (1994). A model of knowledge manage-

17



ment and the N-form corporation. Strategic Man-agement Journal, 15(2), 73-90.

Husain, S., & Nazim, M. (2013). Concepts of knowledge management among library & information science professionals. International Journal of Information Dissemination & Technology, 3(4), 264-269.

Islam, S., Siddike, A. K., & Naznin, S. (2015). Usage and applications of knowledge management for improv-ing library and information service in Bangladesh. Journal of Information & Knowledge Management, 14(3), 50-52.

Kwan, M. M., & Balasubramanian, P. (2003). Pro-cess-oriented knowledge management: A case study. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 54(2), 204-211.

Malhotra, Y. (2006). Knowledge management and new organization forms: A framework for business model innovation. Information Resources Manage-ment Journal, 13(1), 5-14.

Mostofa, S. K. M., & Islam, M. (2015). Challenges and opportunities of knowledge management in uni-versity library: A case study of Dhaka University Li-brary in Bangladesh. Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice, 3(4), 49-61.

Nonaka, I. (2003). The post-Nonaka knowledge man-agement. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 9(6), 451-462.

Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The Knowledge-creat-ing company. New York: Oxford UP.

Rowley, J. (1999). What is knowledge management? Li-brary Management, 20(8), 416-420.

Shanhong, T. (2000). Knowledge management in librar-ies in the 21st century. Proceedings of 66th IFLA Council & General Conference, Jerusalem, 2000.

Sivankalai, S., & Thulasi, K. Y. (2012). Total quality man-agement in academic libraries: A study. Internation-al Journal of Education Research & Technology, 3(1), 66-72.

Sultana, N. (2017). Knowledge management adoption and implementation: The contemporary role of the National Library of Bangladesh (Unpublished M.A. thesis). University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Thomas, J. H. (1995). A brief history of knowledge man-agement. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Tseng, F.-C., & Fan, Y.-J. (2011). Exploring the influence of organizational ethical climate on knowledge management. Journal of Business Ethics, 101(2),

325-342.Ugwu, C. I., & Ezema, I. J. (2010). Research paper com-

petencies for successful knowledge management applications in Nigerian academic libraries. Inter-national Journal of Library and Information Science, 2(9), 184-189.

Wenger, E. (2004). Knowledge management as a dough-nut. Ivey Business Journal Of Improving The Practice Of Management, January/February 2004.

18

Interlinking Open Government Data in Korea using Administrative District Knowledge Graph

Open Access

Accepted date: March 6, 2018Received date: November 9, 2017

*Corresponding Author: Haklae KimResearch Engineer Korea Institute of Science and Technology InformationYuseong-gu, Daejeon, KoreaE-mail: [email protected]


ⓒ Haklae Kim, 2018

ABSTRACTInterest in open data is continuing to grow around the world. In particular, open government data are considered an important element in securing government transparency and creating new industrial values. The South Korean government has enacted legislation on opening public data and provided diversified policy and technical sup-port. However, there are also limitations to effectively utilizing open data in various areas. This paper introduces an administrative district knowledge model to improve the sharing and utilization of open government data, where the data are semantically linked to generate a knowledge graph that connects various data based on administra-tive districts. The administrative district knowledge model semantically models the legal definition of administra-tive districts in South Korea, and the administrative district knowledge graph is linked to data that can serve as an administrative basis, such as addresses and postal codes, for potential use in hospitals, schools, and traffic control.

Keywords: Open Data, Government Data, Knowledge Graph, Ontology

Haklae Kim *Korea Institute of Science and Technology InformationYuseong-gu, Daejeon, KoreaE-mail: [email protected]



19 http://www.jistap.org

Interlinking Open Government Data

1. INTRODUCTION

The White House report “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence” analyzes future changes in human society and public policies due to artificial in-telligence technologies and proposes new directions (NSTC, 2016). Interestingly, the report emphasizes the importance of data as well as artificial intelligence tech-nologies. It makes 23 recommendations, the second of which proposes open training data for artificial intelli-gence and open data standardization. Similarly, the UK government has emphasized the importance of data in a report on growth in the artificial intelligence industry (Hall & Pesenti, 2017). In particular, they emphasized the importance of data that can be processed by ma-chines in an artificial intelligence environment. Artificial intelligence is inevitably connected to data (Section 3: Recommendations to improve access to data). However, securing the necessary data is a very difficult problem for data consumers. In such an environment, the move-ment of governments to open their data to the private sector can be a very important catalyst for the develop-ment of artificial intelligence industries.

The open government data policy started by the UK and USA has expanded to Europe, Asia, and Africa (Tran & Scholtes, 2015). The South Korean government is promoting an open data policy through the “Act on Promotion of the Provision and Use of Public Data” (MOIS, 2013) and has opened a large number of data-sets through its open data portal.1 As of October 2017, this site provides 20,797 files and 2,385 application pro-gramming interfaces (APIs) of 686 agencies. What are the ripple effects of open government data? South Korea is ranked first in the open data field hosted by OECD (Kang, 2017) and fifth in the Open Data Barometer (Web Foundation, 2017), which is an international open data evaluation index. However, the use of open government data is limited, and users have complained that it is diffi-cult to create new values through open government data (Seo, 2017a; Seo, 2017b).

In general, effective use of open government data can

be examined from a policy and technical standpoint. From a policy perspective, the government has deliv-ered more demanding data in priority. For example, national core data is a high-quality and large-volume dataset that is selected by some criteria such as high demand for openness and urgency based on demand. However, datasets that are published without consider-ation of data quality are restricted for use in the private sector. Various technical issues are discussed in terms of open data such as data quality, data formats, or data integration (Matheus et al., 2014; Safarov et al., 2017). In particular, connecting of heterogeneous datasets should be taken seriously. Public data tends to be partially published from the source system possessed by the gov-ernment, and information defined in the source system such as data structure and relationships between other tables is often not disclosed or is lost in the process of data publication. This presents a challenge for the data consumer to understand and use the data. In addition, the connection and integration of data is necessary to use fragmented and partial data. In this reason, a ref-erence point is required to use common data between heterogeneous data sources. The more data is linked through common data, the higher the quality of the data. From a technical point of view, Linked Data can be utilized as a technique to connect data semantically using web standards (Berners-Lee, 2006; Bizer et al., 2007). In addition, by representing different public data as Linked Data, utilization in the field such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and smart cities can be enhanced (Henrique et al., 2017).

This paper proposes an ontology model for semanti-cally expressing administrative districts with high utili-zation in public data, and then introduces a knowledge graph of all the objects constituting the administrative districts of the Republic of Korea. The administrative district knowledge graph can be used as basic data for making connections between public data. The contents of this paper are as follows. Section 2 examines the definition of public data with its similar terms and utili-zation issues. Section 3 examines the concept and status

1 http://data.go.kr

20


of administrative districts and proposes a knowledge model of administrative districts. Section 4 describes the current status of the administrative district knowl-edge graph and introduces use cases for interlinking some datasets with this graph. Section 5 concludes and discusses future research.

2. PROBLEMS WITH OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA UTILIZATION

2.1. Definition of Open Government DataAccording to the Open Data Handbook,2 open data

are characterized by availability and access, reuse and redistribution, and universal participation (Open Knowledge, 2017). Open data must be usable as a whole and not by parts. It must be possible to down-load or modify via the Web. It must also be possible for open data to be reused and redistributed through a combination with other data. Finally, anyone must be able to use the data without discrimination against specific persons or groups. Public sector information made available to the public as open data is termed “Open Government Data.” According to the Act on Promotion of the Provision and Use of Public Data (MOIS, 2013), open government data refers to “the data or information processed by optical or electronic methods, such as databases and electronic files, created or acquired by public agencies for purposes specified in laws.” From an ownership perspective, open govern-ment data are originally possessed by the government but are provided to the private sector for government transparency and efficiency. “Provision” in the Public Data Act means “permission by public agencies for the users to access public data in forms that can be read by machines or transmission of public data in various ways” (MOIS, 2016a). “Machine readable” refers to a

state in which data can be modified, converted, and distributed using software (MOIS, 2016a). In sum-mary, open government data can be interpreted as a category of open data because they share the three characteristics that define open data.

2.2. Open Government Data Utilization IssuesIn South Korea, the Public Data Utilization Sup-

port Centre3 and Public Data Strategy Committee4 is in charge of practical support for public data release and utilization through the Act on Promotion of the Provision and Use of Public Data. However, impacts through open government data are insufficient. There are various factors that have reduced the utilization of open government data in South Korea, including performance oriented policies and a lack of shared culture. In addition, insufficient standardization of open government has been pointed out as an obstacle to data utilization.

Figure 1 shows an example of the data released as open government data. Three datasets have common information about administrative agencies. Figure 1-(A) shows government agencies, which are classified into three different levels from the administrative stan-dard code management system.5 Figure 1-(B) shows a dataset of government agencies provided by the open data portal (as of August 31, 2016),6 which includes information on police substations, post offices, public health centres, and regional offices managed by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS). Figure 1-(C) is the agency status data of Hamyang-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do (2017).7 This example has two implications: 1) data quality and 2) data interlinking. The three datasets include information on adminis-trative agencies, but their data fields and the values of each field are different. For example, “대분류코드” (classification_large) and “유형_1” (type_1) or “전체

2 http://opendatahandbook.org/3 http://bit.ly/2v2avKO4 http://bit.ly/2v4hsL65 http://code.go.kr6 http://bit.ly/2tBBuJk7 http://bit.ly/2tBNH0h



기관명” (whole agency name) and “기관명” (agency name) are different data fields, and the values of “함양 경찰서” (Hamyang police station) are also different. In this case, people can interpret them as the same information, but machines cannot understand their identical relationship. In the case of the fields for tele-phone numbers, the field names are different (“대표

전화번호” [representative telephone number] versus “연락처” [contact number]), and the values are not identical. Such problems frequently occur throughout open government data and lower the confidence in data quality, even though the government provides some guidelines for opening their data (MOIS, 2016a; MOIS, 2017). Second is a lack of reference information for interlinking data. It is essential to interlink datasets in situations where most open government data are available to administrative agencies or departments. The agency codes (“기관코드”) in Figure 1-(B) can be important reference information for identifying data.

If such agency codes are included in Figure 1-(C), it may be possible to interlink the data. The reference information plays a very important role in interlinking data that are currently released or to be released in the future and ultimately is a very effective factor for im-proving the use of open government data.

In summary, the effective use of open government data requires making it possible to interlink data by improving the quality of the released data and utilizing reference information for the values that are used in the released data. From a technical perspective, this can be realized by applying ontology and linked data (Kim, 2010; Kim, 2017a). In this paper, the proposed administrative district knowledge model presents semantic definitions of the administrative districts in South Korea and the relationship between the admin-istrative districts, and a method is proposed for using data consistently based on code systems related to the administrative districts.

Fig. 1 An example of data quality of open government data

22


3. ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT KNOWLEDGE MODEL

3.1. Model for Administrative Districts in South Korea

Administrative districts are administrative units that compartmentalize the territory of a nation, which is a unit of politics, according to the purpose of the national administration. It is important in national administra-tion, but they are particularly important in the local jurisdiction of local governments. From a data perspec-tive, open government data includes a variety of areas of data on the country, including population, budget, maps, transport, and environment, where such infor-mation is typically divided into administrative divisions. Accordingly, administrative district information could be the common data that connects different public data.

As shown in Figure 2, administrative districts in South Korea currently consist of one special city, six metropolitan cities, one special autonomous city, eight provinces, and one special self-governing province. According to the Local Autonomy Law (MOIS, 2016c),

administrative districts in South Korea are composed of upper-level local autonomies, lower-level local auton-omies, and subordinate administrative districts. There are towns, townships, and neighborhoods. Towns and townships have rural villages as subordinate organiza-tions. Almost all municipalities have urban villages and hamlets as subordinate organizations. Details on the ad-ministrative districts prescribed by the Local Autonomy Law are given below.

• Upper-level local autonomies: These include a spe-cial city, a special autonomous city, metropolitan cit-ies, provinces, and a special self-governing province. Upper-level local autonomies are administrative or-ganizations with higher autonomy than lower-level local autonomies and oversee larger areas.

• Lower-level local autonomies: These include cities, counties, and districts. In general, lower-level local autonomies are lower organizations than upper-lev-el local autonomies and oversee smaller areas. The administrative cities and non-autonomous districts of the Jeju special self-governing province are not included in lower-level local autonomies.

Fig. 2 Administrative district system and status in South Korea



• Subordinate administrative districts: The special city includes autonomous districts, the metropolitan cities include autonomous districts and counties, and the provinces include autonomous cities and counties.

• The special city and metropolitan cities may have autonomous districts as subordinate administrative districts, but the provinces have general districts (non-autonomous) as subordinate administrative districts of autonomous cities.

• The special autonomous city constitutes a basic local government.

• The special self-governing province has non-au-tonomous administrative cities. The administrative cities are directly governed by the governor of the special self-governing province and have no author-ity as lower-level local autonomies.

• Except for the special city and metropolitan cities, cities with a population of 500,000 or more may be designated as general districts. Because general districts are the subordinate administrative agencies of lower-level local autonomies, their leaders are not

elected but appointed by the mayor of an autono-mous city.

• Cities (autonomous and administrative) and dis-tricts (autonomous and general) have towns, town-ships, and neighborhoods, while counties have towns and townships as subordinate administrative districts. Towns and townships are divided into ad-ministrative rural villages, and neighborhoods are divided into urban villages. Urban villages and ad-ministrative rural villages are divided into hamlets, which are the lowest administrative districts.

The administrative district knowledge model se-mantically expresses the relationship between the ad-ministrative districts defined in the Local Autonomy Act (Kim, 2017b). The KoreaAdministrativeDivision class, which expresses the administrative districts in South Korea, is the highest class of all administrative districts, including upper- and lower-level local auton-omies and non-autonomous divisions. Figure 3 shows the relationship between the upper and lower levels of the administrative district system in South Korea. The

Fig. 3 Administrative district knowledge model. The KoreaAdministrativeDivision class is a sub-class of the AdministrativeArea of schema.org. It means that the terms of schema.org are reused in this model.

24


administrative district knowledge model applies the ad-ministrative units defined in the administrative district system and the relationships between such units. The relationship between administrative districts is repre-sented by the ad:include and ad:partOf attributes, and the two attributes are inversely related (owl:inverseOf). For example, an upper-level administrative district may include a lower-level administrative district. Conversely, a lower-level administrative district would be included in an upper-level administrative district.

For municipalities, dong has both administrative and legal definitions. For example, Myeong-dong in Jung-gu, Seoul special city is the administrative dong and includes legal dong such as Euljiro 1-ga, Euljiro 2-ga, Namdaemunro 1-ga, Samgak-dong, Suha-dong, Changgyo-dong, Hoehyeon-dong 3-ga, Chungmuro 2-ga, Myeong-dong 1-ga, Myeong-dong 2-ga, Namsan-dong 1-ga, Namsan-dong 2-ga, Namsan-dong 3-ga, Jeodong 1-ga, Mugyo-dong, Dadong, and Taepyeongro 1-ga. In other words, a legal dong is the name of the area that is the base of the address, while an administrative dong is the name of the place where the resident centre (i.e. community centre) is located. While the administrative dong is used for distinguishing all administrative or electoral districts, it is common to mix the administra-tive dong and legal dong together. The administrative district knowledge model expresses the legal dong and administrative dong with an inverse relation. The ad:isHaengjeongdongOf attribute defines an administra-tive dong as associated with a specific legal dong. The ad:isBeopjeongdongOf attribute is used for the opposite case, i.e. to express a legal dong included in an adminis-trative dong.

3.2. Design CharacteristicsThe administrative district knowledge model defines

a minimum number of key terms and reuses the univer-sally used ontology terms. In general, the reuse of on-tology terms is understood as a basis for improving the accessibility of a knowledge base and realizing interop-erability between knowledge bases. The administrative district knowledge model defines the hierarchical rela-tionship between terms based on the schema (schema.org) terms and reuses the Dublin Core metadata terms. For example, all administrative district classes are sub-ordinate classes of schema:AdminstrativeArea, and their class names use the dc:title attribute of Dublin Core.

A uniform resource identifier (URI) must be defined and extended consistently as a key element for connect-ing data. The administrative district knowledge model defines the URI system according to the class and instance levels. Classes are classified through def and define directories such as ad that can identify domains (administrative districts). The class (Gu) correspond-ing to an administrative district is located at the end as shown in Figure 4-(A). This instance uses id to distin-guish it from def, which is the identifier of the class, and adds a directory to distinguish the type of the instance. The following example is for Jung-gu, Seoul special city. The autonomous district (Jachi-gu) type is defined, and the administrative classification code (1114000000) is defined as an identifier as follows:

http://lod.datahub.kr/id/ad/Jachi-gu/1114000000The vocabularies for ontology are generally defined

in English. However, there is a limit to expressing the names of administrative districts in South Korea in En-glish. For example, it is ambiguous whether a ‘district’ refers to a city or hamlet and is not suitable for defining the original meaning of a term. In addition, the Korean names are preferred, because specific terms for admin-istrative districts are defined and used in Korean. Thus, the knowledge model generally uses Korean terms and Romanization notation, and the corresponding English names are written together. As shown in Figure 4-(B), the ‘Gu’ class has its own URI (i.e. http://lod.datahub.kr/def/ad/Gu), and simultaneously it provides additional information for meaning in English using several prop-erties such as dcterms:subject or owl:sameAs.

4. CONSTRUCTION AND APPLICATION OF THE KNOWLEDGE GRAPH

4.1. Status of the Administrative District Graph

Information related to administrative districts, ad-dresses, and locations is commonly included in the data released by the government. In other words, consistent administrative district data can be effectively used to improve the quality of open government data and in-terlink such data. An administrative district knowledge graph was constructed by applying the administrative district data of South Korea to the administrative dis-trict knowledge model. Administrative district data



were constructed based on the resident registration address code8 of MOIS and Korea administrative dis-trict classification9 data of Statistics Korea. The former has information on the legal dong (45,957 cases), and the latter includes the relationship between the legal dong and administrative dong (21,695 cases). Therefore, individual open government data can be interlinked regardless of the legal dong and administrative dong. In addition, various open government data with adminis-trative district information can be interlinked on a se-mantic level. For example, both the road name address and postal code use administrative district information; at the same time, they can be the base information for other data. In this manner, the data of elementary

schools, junior high schools, high schools, universities, parking lots, subways, hospitals, and cultural assets were continuously interlinked in the administrative district graph. Table 1 summaries datasets that are interlinked to the administrative district knowledge graph.

4.2. Interlinking Administrative AgenciesThe administrative district graph and administrative

agency data were interlinked as follows: 1) the entire administrative agency data were converted into a graph, 2) the administrative agency graph and frontline ad-ministrative agency data were interlinked, and 3) the administrative agency graph and data of Hamyang-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do were interlinked.

8 http://bit.ly/2xxQIVq9 http://bit.ly/1PQArf0

Fig. 4 Example of the knowledge model

26


Table 1. Statistics of the Administrative District Graph and its Datasets

Dataset Data Source Data format Size Connected datasets

Administrative District The Ministry of the Interior and Safety CSV, XLS 45,957 Administrative District

Administrative Agency The Ministry of the Interior and Safety CSV, XLS 14,183 Administrative District

Road-name address The Ministry of the Interior and Safety CSV, XLS 347,242 Administrative District

Postcode The Ministry of the Interior and Safety CSV, XLS 302,125 Administrative District, Road-name address

Elementary school Open Data Portal CSV, XLS 6,247 Administrative District, Postcode

Middle school Open Data Portal CSV, XLS 3,204 Administrative District, Postcode

High School Open Data Portal CSV, XLS 2,304 Administrative District, Postcode

University Open Data Portal CSV, XLS 1,837 Administrative District, Postcode

Kindergarten Open Data Portal CSV, XLS 8,696 Administrative District, Postcode

Hospital Open Data Portal CSV, XLS 84,731 Administrative District, Postcode

Cultural Heritage Open Data Portal CSV, XLS 13,704 Administrative District

Parking lot Seoul Data CSV 471 Administrative District

Operation time of subways Seoul Open Data Plaza CSV 3,337 Administrative District

Lines of subways Seoul Open Data Plaza CSV 20 Administrative District

Subway stations Seoul Open Data Plaza CSV 581 Administrative District

• The administrative dong code and location code fields of the administrative agency data were inter-linked with the administrative dong and legal dong agency codes of the administrative district graph. The postal code, remaining address, and parcel number fields were linked through the postal code and road name address graph. Because the type fields classification_large, classification_medium, and classification_small in the administrative agency data were represented as integers, the task of con-verting the administrative agency type classification data into a graph and linking them was added. The administrative agency type classification used a clas-sification system for the government of South Ko-rea, legislative/judicial/constitutional agencies, state administrative agencies, and municipalities. Here, 393 cases were constructed.

• The agency code, whole agency name, and lowest agency name fields of the frontline administrative agency data were consistent with those of the ad-ministrative agency data. Therefore, the two datasets were interlinked by identifying identical data based on the agency code. However, the expression values of the type information were different. As noted earlier, the administrative agency data had integer values, but the frontline administrative agency data had character values for the type classification. The type fields classification_medium and classi-fication_small in the administrative agency data were mapped to the type_1 and type_2 fields in the frontline administrative agency data with the type classification graph data. For example, the Seoul re-gional office of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs (MPVA) was classified into type_1 = PV and



type_2 = MPVA_regional office in the administrative agency data. The administrative agency data were then mapped to type classification_medium = 08 and type classification_small = 01 in the administra-tive agency data and interlinked to “http://datahub.kr/administrative-organization/division/0108” and “http://datahub.kr/administrative-organization/section/010801” of the type classification graph. Al-though the frontline administrative agency data did not include information on the type field classifica-tion_large, the upper and lower relationships could be deduced because all types were defined by the skos:broader/skos:narrower relationship in the type classification graph. In addition, the data values were refined while the data were linked. For example, all spaces included in the telephone number field in the frontline administrative agency data were converted to “-” (298 cases), and fields without column names were modified to “remarks.” In the case of telephone numbers, however, the representative numbers and regional numbers were included so that they could be used together in the graph.

• Because the data of Hamyang-gun Gyeong-sangnam-do did not have the agency code field, identical data were identified by using the agency names as a reference. For the method of expressing the agency names, the whole agency names and low-est agency names were used in a mixed manner, and the classification of the orders of agencies through spaces and special characters differed from the ad-ministrative agency data. For example, “Hamyang Register Office, Changwon Regional Court, Supreme Court” and “Hamyang and Sancheong Office, Yeo-ngnam Branch, National Agricultural Products Qual-ity Management Service, Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs” in the administrative agency data were expressed as “Hamyang Register Office, Changwon Regional Court” and “Hamyang and San-cheong Office, National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service” in the data of Hamyang-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do. As a result, 17 out of 22 cases were identified as identical data by applying the whole agency name and lowest agency name in-formation of the administrative district graph. Five inconsistent cases were fields that did not belong to the administrative agencies, such as “KT Hamyang Branch.”

Applying the administrative district graph was found to be very effective at improving the quality of the open government data. The data quality can be improved directly by refining data values using standard data. In addition, data can be efficiently used without declaring redundant data values by semantically interlinking data. As shown in Figure 5, the data of Hamyang-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do could be interlinked with the ad-ministrative district graph to obtain information that was not available before. When “Hamyang police sta-tion” (i.e. the first value in Figure 5) was linked to the knowledge graph, new information such as the agency code, type, and postal code could be obtained. In oth-er words, all of the information in the administrative agency graph could be linked, including “agency code = 1326768,” “whole agency name = Hamyang police station, Gyeongsangnam-do police department, National Police Agency,” “highest agency code = 1320000,” “postal code = 50041,” “type classification_large = 01,” “type classifica-tion_medium = 08,” and “type classification_small = 03.” Furthermore, machines could automatically read the data and deduce their meaning, because all the data on the administrative districts and agencies were expressed through a semantic web language (Janowicz et al., 2014).

5. CONCLUSION

This paper proposes a knowledge model for ad-ministrative districts in South Korea and introduces a knowledge graph that interlinks administrative district data with relevant data. Although the use of open gov-ernment data has been examined in various areas such as smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intel-ligence, their active use is still limited because of issues with data quality and linkage. The proposed knowledge model and knowledge graph effectively address such issues. First, an ontology model for the relationship between administrative districts as defined in the Local Autonomy Law was designed and the administrative district data published by the government were con-verted into a knowledge graph. Second, major open government data including the administrative district information were interlinked with the knowledge graph. The resulting administrative district knowledge graph can be used as a reference for improving the quality of open government data and semantically interlinking

28


Fig. 5 Interlinking entities from heterogeneous data sources. (A) can be interlinked to (B) by the owl:sameAs properties, and the schema:location of (D) refers to an administrative location by using the administrative district graph of (B). In addition, (D) has government agency types from (C).



separately open data.Studies on continuous expansion of the knowledge

model and on data linkage are required, because open government data include subjects of various areas. In particular, studies on interlinking domains that are base data on a national level (e.g. national basic dis-tricts, postal codes, and spatial information) and closely related to administrative districts are required in the future. In addition, studies on practical applications of the knowledge graph interlinking different domains, such as question-and-answer services, visualization, and multidimensional analysis, are required in the future.

REFERENCES

Berners-Lee, T. (2006). Linked Data-World Wide Web design issues. Retrieved from https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

Bizer, C., Cyganiak, R., & Heath, T. (2007). How to publish Linked Data on the Web? Retrieved from http://wifo5-03.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/biz-er/HowtoPublishLinkedData.htm

Hall, W., & Pesenti, J. (2017). Growing the artificial intel-ligence industry in the UK. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/652097/Growing_the_artifi-cial_intelligence_industry_in_the_UK.pdf

Henrique S., Dantas, V., Furtado, V., Pinheiro, P., & McGuinness, D. L. (2017). From data to city indica-tors: A knowledge graph for supporting automatic generation of dashboards. Proceedings of the 14th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2017), pp. 94-108.

Janowicz, K., Pascal, H., Benjamin, A., Kolas, D., & Var-deman, C. (2014). Five stars of linked data vocabu-lary use. Semantic Web, 5(3), 173-176.

Kang, W. (2017, July 25). Korea OECD leader in open government data. Korea Times. Retrieved from http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2017/08/133_233592.html

Kim, H. (2010). The semantic web and semantic con-nectivity: The starting point for web science. Com-munications of the Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers, 28(3), 31-40.

Kim, H. (2017a). Knowledge graph. Seoul: Communica-tion Books.

Kim, H. (2017b). Building knowledge graph of the Ko-rea Administrative district for interlinking public open data. Journal Of The Korea Contents Associa-tion, 17(12), 1-11.

Matheus, R., Vaz, J., & Ribeiro, M. (2014). Open gov-ernment data and the data usage for improvement of public services in the Rio de Janeiro City. In Pro-ceedings of the 8th International Conference on The-ory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV ‘14) (pp. 338-341). New York: ACM.

Ministry of the Interior and Safety (2013). Act on pro-motion of the provision and use of public data. Retrieved from http://www.law.go.kr/eng/engLsSc.do?menuId=1&query=public+data&x=15&y=33

Ministry of the Interior and Safety (2016a). Public data open standard: Ministry of Public Adminis-tration and Home Affairs notice no. 2016-46. Re-trieved from https://www.data.go.kr/information/PDS_0000000000000235/recsroom.do

Ministry of the Interior and Safety (2016c). Local Au-tonomy Act: Act No.14197, 29. May, 2016., amend-ment by other act. Retrieved from http://www.law.go.kr/eng/engLsSc.do?menuId=1&query=%EC%A7%80%EB%B0%A9%EC%9E%90%EC%B9%98%EB%B2%95&x=0&y=0#liBgcolor13

Ministry of the Interior and Safety (2017). Public data, open standards guide: MOGAHA notice no. 2016-46. Retrieved from https://www.data.go.kr/infor-mation/PDS_0000000000000255/recsroom.do

National Information Society Agency (2016b). Open government data quality management manual. Re-trieved from https://www.data.go.kr/information/PDS_0000000000000404/recsroom.do

National Science and Technology Council (2016). Pre-paring for the future of artificial intelligence, tech-nical report, United States. Executive office of the president and M. Holden, J. P. Smith., Washington D.C. 20502, October 2016.

Open Knowledge International, ed. (2017). Open data handbook, open knowledge. Retrieved from http://opendatahandbook.org/

Safarov, I., Meijer, A., & Grimmelikhuijsen, S. (2017). Utilization of open government data: A systematic literature review of types, conditions, effects and users. Information Polity, 22(1), 1-24.

Seo, H. (2017a). An empirical study on open govern-ment data: Focusing on ODB and OUR index. In-

30


formation Policy, 24(1), 48-78.Seo. H. (2017b). A critical review on open, useful, reus-

able government data index by OECD with level of domestic open government data: Focusing on com-parison with Open Data Barometer. Information Policy, 24(2), 43-67.

Tran, E., & Scholtes, G. (2015). Open data literature re-view. Retrieved from https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Final_OpenDataLi-tReview_2015-04-14_1.1.pdf

Web Foundation (2017). The open data barometer 4th ed., web foundation. Retrieved from https://webfoundation.org/2017/05/open-data-barome-ter-4th-edition-coming-may-23/.

31

Measurement of Global Nursing Research Output: A Bibliometric Study (1996-2015)

Open Access

Accepted date: December 27, 2017Received date: January 6, 2016

*Corresponding Author: Shivendra Singh Senior LibrarianAll India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Patna, BiharE-mail: [email protected]


ⓒ Shivendra Singh, Ramesh Pandita, 2018

ABSTRACTPurpose: This study aims to examine the research output in the field of nursing at the global level during the last two decades, viz., for the period 1996-2015, with special reference to India. Some of the aspects examined include the research growth in nurs-ing literature during the period of study, leading nursing research countries at the regional and global level, and citation analysis.Scope and Methodology: This study is global in nature, but emphasis has also been laid on India’s research contribution in nursing at the global level. Aspects like regional contribution to the nursing research output have also been assessed. This study is purely based on secondary data retrieved from SCImago Journal and Country Rankings. The figures in the study are based on one particular database and are not exhaustive; hence they simply reflect a trend in nursing research at the global level.Findings: During the period 1996 through 2015, a total of 550,490 research articles were published across the world by 212 nation states at an average of 2,596 articles from each individual country. On average, during the period of study, the num-ber of nursing research publications grew at the rate of 7.36% each year. North America has emerged as one of the leading nursing research continents of the world by publishing 218,614 research articles, constituting 39.71% of the global nursing research output. The U.S. and U.K. are the world’s two leading nursing research countries, which contributed 193,819 and 61,730 research articles respectively, comprising a 35.21% and 11.21% share of global nursing research output. India and China, apart from being the two fastest growing nursing research countries, have the potential to meet the global human re-source demand in the field of nursing, given the skilled and trained human resource both these countries possess in nursing. Social Implication: There is always a need to share working knowledge in some professions and nursing is one of them. There cannot be a better medium than linking practice with theory through the research medium. Metric stud-ies in turn help to get a better idea about the amount of work done in any given field at the national and internation-al level, thus identifying the need thereof to improve upon those areas where there is research lag.

Keywords: nursing research, SCImago, continents, research output, research growth, India, world

Shivendra Singh * All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Patna, BiharE-mail: [email protected]

Ramesh PanditaBGSB University, Rajouri Jammu & Kashmir, IndiaE-mail: [email protected]



32


1. INTRODUCTION

Research in nursing over a period of time has turned out to be one of the mainstays of biomedical research, of which it is an integral part. Advances in nursing not only supplement the application and practice of the medical profession, but also help in the treatment of ailing patients and their recovery. Nursing practice and nursing research move hand in hand with overall biomedical education and research. Dependence of the former on the latter can be gauged from the fact that the treatment part of patients is incomplete without the recovery or nursing part of patients.

Although nursing has matured as an independent subject field, still researchers see research in nursing as part of biomedical research. Research in the biomedi-cal sciences, including nursing, is one of the foremost endeavors, pre-eminent for having a sustainable health sector all across the world. People should pay attention towards both aspects of knowledge, viz., the rate at which new knowledge is created and the rate at which knowledge becomes obsolete (Bosworth, 1978). The rate of obsolescence of knowledge is greater in the sci-ences than in social sciences and the humanities. The rate of obsolescence of research results in the field of biomedical sciences is much faster than for any other sciences. The half-life of journals in the field of health sciences is shorter than for journals in the field of mathematics, physics, and humanities (Davis, 2013). People should undertake constant and continuous research in all the branches of biomedical sciences al-most in unison, so as to supplement the allied research findings in its other areas.

It has been observed that previously people were not aware of the treatment part of the disease, but were well aware of the fact that an ailing person needs to be nursed so as to recover from ill health. But as time has changed, so has the course of nursing changed, and today we can see nursing has grown into a full-fledged independent research subject. Nursing professionals all over the world are actively involved in seeking out new-er and better means of post treatment. Even the modern day nursing profession has gone a step further, whereby nursing interns specialize in recovery from certain kind of diseases. All these developments in the nursing pro-fession are because of the constant and continuous re-search being conducted in nursing all across the word.

The present study has been undertaken with a view to examine research growth in the field of nursing in the world with special reference to India during the pe-riod 1996-2015. Some of the main aspects examined in the present study include research output and research growth during the period of study at the global level. Similar aspects have been explored at the regional and continental level, along with some leading nursing re-search countries across the world.

2. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

• To examine research output and research growth in the field of nursing across the world during the period 1996-2015.

• To identify the leading nursing research countries across the world and India’s contribution to nurs-ing research during the period of study.

• To reflect research distribution in the field of nursing across different regions of the world made during the period of study.

3. METHODOLOGY AND SCOPE

The data for the present study were retrieved from the official website of SCImago on March 19, 2015 (ac-cessible at http://www.scimagojr.com) (Scimago Lab, 2015). However, the study was updated up to 2015 and accordingly the revised data were retrieved from the website on May 4, 2017. The database is open access and can be accessed and downloaded by anybody all across the world. To retrieve the data, the main field was selected as nursing against 23 sub-nursing fields, against different regions and countries in a particular year. The process was repeated for each individual year. Accordingly, the data were retrieved against different regions for different years. The data upon retrieval were in semi-structured form, and given the objectives of the study the data were structured so as to meet the requirements of the study. The study reflects the year-wise publication distribution of nursing research both at the global level and India’s contribution thereof during the period of study. In the study an attempt has also been made to examine the corresponding research growth of nursing publications. The distribution of


Measurement of Global Nursing Research Output

nursing publications has also been assessed at the con-tinental and other regional levels along with citation distribution and h-index. To perform expressions like addition, subtraction, division, and drawing percent-age, MS Excel has been used.

The study is primarily global in nature, but equal emphasis has been given to the research contribution of India to global nursing research output during the period of study.

4. REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A growing trend has evolved to undertake bibliomet-ric studies in different subject fields, including nursing, evaluating both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the research undertaking (Smith & Hazelton, 2008). The researchers discussed the evidence based practices in nursing, the journal performance indicators, and international publishing trends.

There is no denial of the fact that nursing is more a psychological aspect of recovery, whereby patients during recovery are supposedly more encouraged to be in a positive frame of mind, so as to speed up their re-covery. Psychology, physiology, and sociology are some of the prime concepts around which nursing research revolves because of the fact that nursing involves all three aspects in rehabilitating a person back to one’s social setup (Moody et al., 1988). While assessing nursing research aspects, the researchers studied 720 research articles published from 1977-1986. The most interesting aspect of this study revealed that nearly 95% of research publications were undertaken by nurses as first author. Active involvement of nurses in nurs-ing research is very important for the fact that these researchers are in a better position to reflect the weak and finer aspects of nursing. There is a growing trend towards nursing research in critical care observed (VanCott, Tittle, Moody, & Wilson, 1991). The re-searchers analyzed the articles published in the area of critical care nursing practices during the period 1979-1988 and found a high percentage of intervention-ori-ented studies identifying a research based practice.

Neuroscience nursing research is one of the most specialized nursing research areas. In a study Dilorio et al. (2004) investigated the research output in neuro-science from the period 1989-2000 by evaluating the

articles published in nursing research journals, which include neuroscience nursing, nursing research, re-search in nursing and health, and western journals of nursing, and found a substantial increase in research output during the 1990’s. The authors further observed that scientific methods over the period have grown more complex than what they used to be previously. The study of nursing neuroscience research was carried forward by Dilorio et al. (2004) and Palese, Basone, and Mestroni (2014) to investigate the research articles published in similar areas as investigated by Dilorio et al. in 2004 and found a significant increase in scientific research productivity.

Paediatric nursing research is equally a very widely studied subject field, as more than 16.6% of the total nursing intervention research studies pertain to child care, uphold Beal and Betz (1992) while analyzing the 319 nursing research articles published in seven refer-eed nursing research journals of paediatrics. To assess nursing research undertaken in the field of cancer, Molassiotis et al. (2006) reviewed 619 research articles published from 1994 to 2003. Of the total research ar-ticles published, 49.1% were alone published from the United States and the other half of the literature was produced from the rest of the world. In a similar study Mendoza-Parra, Paravic-Klijn, Muñoz-Muñoz, Bar-riga, and Jiménez-Contreras (2009) analyzed 13,208 research articles published in 119 Latin American nursing journals and found the majority (31.9%) were published in the nursing research journals in Brazil alone. The researchers found 11.3 years an average lon-gevity of nursing journals, with less than 45% of jour-nals enjoying international readership. The researchers further found that nursing research output doubles almost every 7.3 years at an annual growth rate of 10%.

In order to map research utilization and identify a network of researchers in the field of nursing, Esta-brooks, Winther, and Derksen (2004) analyzed 630 re-search articles published in 194 different nursing jour-nals during the period 1992-2001. The authors found a steady increase in the research output of nursing since the 1990s, with most articles authored as single author with a lesser tendency towards collaborative research. It was further observed that most of the references quot-ed by the authors pertained to nursing research with minimum references from other fields. The researchers found that despite substantial increases in nursing

34


research publications the field is still at an under-de-veloped stage, with lesser emphasis on collaborative research. Biomedical practice and nursing go hand in hand, but when it comes to research in both fields there is a significant difference between the two. While studying 1,845 research articles published from the period 1988-1995 from the Research Output Database (ROD) of U.K. biomedical research, Traynor, Rafferty, and Lewison (2001) found that less than 1% of the total publications pertain to nursing. The authors made their analysis by segregating articles on the endogenous and exogenous nature of each one. The research techniques in the nursing field, like other specialised sciences, varies considerably from country to country, observed Polit and Beck (2009) while studying 1,072 research articles published in the eight different English nursing research journals of different countries during the year 2005-06.

Oncology or cancer nursing research is equally one of the most widely studied subject fields in nursing research. From the period 2001-2011, Zhang, Huang, and Li (2011) analyzed 2,933 publications concerning cancer research in nursing in PubMed published across 264 biomedical journals across the world. The authors found the U.S., the U.K., and Canada to be the largest oncology nursing research countries and found a sub-stantial growth in oncology nursing research across the globe during the period. The authors found that the amount of research undertaken in the field of oncology nursing research in developed countries is far ahead when compared to the developing and under- devel-oped countries of the world. While studying 622 nurs-ing research publications published between the period 1985-1994 in four Spanish nursing journals, Pardo, Re-olid, Delicado, Mallebrera, and Garcia-Meseguer (2001) found that on average each nursing research publica-tion in Spain has 10·64 ± 10·42 references. The authors further observed that 60.3% of the references quoted are in the Spanish language, while there were 36.1% in English with a slight growing tendency towards English language references.

It is preeminent that nursing practitioners should come up with good and evidence based research techniques in nursing profession so as to extend their knowledge base among practitioners across the world (Wilkes, Borbasi, Hawes, Stewart, & May, 2002). These researchers analyzed 509 research articles published

from 1995 to 2000 in the 11 nursing journals across Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. Theory research link-age is a very popular and widely studied subject field in the nursing research, observed Murphy and Freston (1991). These authors, while investigating 142 geron-tology nursing studies, found that 46% of the studies were related to a specific degree while other studies were mostly conceptual or empirical in nature and found interpretive studies the most difficult to link to between theory and practice.

In order to map knowledge utilization literature in nursing, Scott et al. (2010) reviewed 433 research articles to undertake bibliometric analysis of the re-search articles published from 1945 through 2004. The researchers found significant growth in the nursing re-search, which has helped to evolve the scientific knowl-edge community. The researchers also found that very few nursing journals were indexed by Web of Science. The nursing literature and their citation analysis were mapped by Allen, Jacobs, and Levy (2006) for the re-search articles published for a three-year period during 1996-2000. The researchers found that compared to books, journals were more frequently cited. The re-searchers further found that CINAHL and PubMed are the two databases which provide better access to nurs-ing journals.

The quality comparison of research articles published in nursing by Chinese authors from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in science citation indexed journals from 1999 to 2008 were analyzed by Peng and Hui (2011). These authors retrieved 1,015 articles and found the 500 articles published from the Taiwan region received the maximum 1,755 citations, followed by 1,316 of 347 articles from the Hong Kong region, with the lowest 157 citations from 55 articles from mainland China. The authors discussed the quality difference of the research articles as the main reason. A study about nursing research in adverse drug reactions was discussed by Jordan, Knight, and Pointon (2004).

Most of the studies reviewed above have limited scope and have as such evaluated the research growth in nursing within territorial confines, while the scope of the present study is global in nature and has evaluat-ed research growth in the subject discipline of nursing for almost two decades, which enhances and substanti-ates the reliability of the research findings. Besides, no major study has been conducted in India which may



have evaluated the bibliometric contributions of India in nursing at the global level for such an extended peri-od, viz., two decades (1996-2015).

5. RESULTS

The percentages in the expressions performed have been drawn up to two decimal places and have not been rounded off, and as such may reflect variations while drawing figures for 100%. Nursing research growth has been assessed by using the below-men-tioned computational formula so as to draw the corre-sponding research growth and average annual research growth.

Annual corresponding growth reflects the growth re-corded in number of research articles published in the subsequent year from the previous year. This growth can be recorded either in terms of numbers or in terms of percentage, depending upon the requirement and type of analysis a researcher is doing. In the present study we have computed the corresponding growth in terms of percentage, viz. growth of research articles published in present year to that of pervious year, but in terms of percentage. Accordingly, the annual cor-responding growth percentage can be computed by applying the following mathematical expression.

ACG- Annual Corresponding Growth,

End Value–First ValueACG = --------------------------------------------------- × 100 First Value

End Value: Represents the number of research ar-ticles published during the year (suppose 1997) for which we are to calculate the Annual Corresponding Growth (ACG) of research articles to that of research articles published during the previous year or a year before, viz., 1996.

First Value: Represents the number of research ar-ticles published in a year against which we are to cal-culate the Annual Corresponding Growth (ACG) viz., 1996 of research articles published in the second year of the subsequent year (1997) of the article published in first year.

e.g. ACG of Documents for the year

12292-114101997 = -------------------------------------------------- × 100=(7.73) 11410

Accordingly, ACG % has been computed under each column against each year under each head.

The nursing research output during the last two de-cades has recorded an average annual growth of 7.36%, which is almost a fair amount of growth given the research growth in other subject fields of study. A max-imum of 32.77% annual corresponding growth was observed in the year 2006 and a minimum of -4.62% ACG was observed in the year 2015. During the period of study, on average more than 27,000 research articles were published each year in nursing at a global level (Table 1).

Nursing research publications over the period of time have shown substantial growth. During the last two decades, over 297.95% research growth was ob-served in nursing research output, as the number of research articles published in 1996 was 11,410 and this number grew to 45,407 in 2015. More than 11.29% of the total publications under study are not citable doc-uments (Figure 1). There has been proportionate dis-tribution of citations received by nursing publications during the period of study.

A maximum of 7.38% of the total citations share was received by the research articles during the year 2004, while a minimum of 0.26% share was received during the year 2015. It is quite obvious to observe a steady decline in the citations share percentage with the in-crease in the number of years from the date of publica-tion, whereby in a way a sort of saturation level occurs in the citations received. In the same way one may find only a few citations in the early years of publication of a research article, which over a period of time start showing a significant growth. On average, 5% of cita-tions have been received by research articles published during each individual year. The time lag is one of the foremost and important factors which affect citation distribution. Besides, delay in publication of issues and inclusion or exclusion of journals in an index affect citation distribution and its analysis in its own way.

The practice of self-citation is equally prevalent among nursing researchers across the globe. A total

36


Table 1. Global Research Output of Nursing Research

Year Documents (ACG %)

Citable Documents

(ACG %)Citations(Share %)

Self-Citations (Share %)

Avg. Citations per Document

Avg. Self-Citations per

Document

1996 11410 (-) 11116 (-) 276643 (3.50) 88912 (3.61) 24.25 7.79

1997 12292 (7.73) 11921 (7.24) 332013 (4.19) 107228 (4.36) 27.01 8.72

1998 12634 (2.78) 11990 (0.57) 357528 (4.52) 113485 (4.61) 28.30 8.98

1999 13273 (5.05) 12294 (2.53) 383558 (4.85) 121576 (4.94) 28.90 9.16

2000 14643 (10.32) 13682 (11.29) 469516 (5.93) 137541 (5.59) 32.06 9.39

2001 15202 (3.81) 14081 (2.91) 443620 (5.61) 133837 (5.44) 29.18 8.80

2002 16084 (5.80) 14835 (5.35) 482162 (6.09) 152909 (6.21) 29.98 9.51

2003 17317 (7.66) 15596 (5.12) 506192 (6.40) 152188 (6.18) 29.23 8.79

2004 19391 (11.97) 17434 (11.78) 583800 (7.38) 167165 (6.79) 30.11 8.62

2005 21805 (12.44) 19309 (10.75) 529706 (6.69) 159438 (6.48) 24.29 7.31

2006 28952 (32.77) 25494 (32.03) 548421 (6.93) 166475 (6.76) 18.94 5.75

2007 32057 (10.72) 28429 (11.51) 550512 (6.96) 169323 (6.88) 17.17 5.28

2008 33231 (3.66) 29735 (4.59) 520375 (6.57) 167954 (6.82) 15.66 5.05

2009 36710 (10.46) 33030 (11.08) 508097 (6.42) 159216 (6.47) 13.84 4.34

2010 39573 (7.79) 35438 (7.29) 461445 (5.83) 141325 (5.74) 11.66 3.57

2011 41793 (5.60) 37201 (4.97) 359806 (4.55) 119299 (4.85) 8.61 2.85

2012 43748 (4.67) 39143 (5.22) 283381 (2.58) 93737 (3.81) 6.48 2.14

2013 47358 (8.25) 42153 (7.68) 202947 (2.56) 68762 (2.79) 4.29 1.45

2014 47610 (0.53) 42131 (-0.05) 94642 (1.20) 33221 (1.35) 1.99 0.70

2015 45407 (-4.62) 39595 (-6.01) 20199 (0.26) 7354 (0.30) 0.44 0.16

Total (Avg.)* 550490 (7.36)* 494607 (6.79)* 7914563 2460945 14.38 4.47

ACG% - Annual Corresponding Growth Percentage; Avg. –Average

of 18.4% of the total citations received by the nursing research articles during the period of study are self-ci-tations. On average, each nursing publication during each individual year has received 14.38 citations of which 4.47 citations are self-citations. A maximum of 32.06 citations was recorded against each research ar-ticle in the year 2000, while a minimum 0.44 citations

was recorded in the year 2015 (Table 1). Of the total nursing research output published at

the global level during the period of study, nearly 89% has come from the world’s 21 leading nursing research countries alone, while the remaining 11% has come from the remaining 191 nursing research countries of the world. The United States has emerged as one of the



Fig. 1 Growth of nursing research publications (1996-2015)

50000

45000

40000

35000

30000

25000

20000

15000

10000

5000

0

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

1141013273

17317 21805

33231

41793

47358

world’s largest nursing research countries, which alone has contributed 35.21% of total nursing research out-put at the global level. The U.S. is followed by the U.K. and Australia with an individual global research share of 11.21% and 4.75%, respectively. India stands at the bottom of the table with a global research share of 0.77%, while the average contribution of each nursing research country at the global level during the period remained 0.47% (Table 2).

Citation distribution has become one of the most important parameters in assessing research quality. Accordingly, of the total citations received by nursing research articles at the global level, 2,940,245 (37.15%) were received alone by the research articles published from the U.S., reflecting the dominance of research articles published from the U.S. in nursing. The U.S. is followed by the U.K. and Australia with a citations share percentage of 10.69% and 4.32%, respectively.

Research quality is generally assessed by analyzing the average citations received by the research article. The greater the number of citations received by a re-

search article, the more qualitative the research work is deemed to be. Accordingly, in the above tabulation an attempt was made to reflect the average number of citations received by each research article published at both the global level and country level. The U.S., besides being the leading nursing research country, is also the most cited one, but the average number of citations received by each research article published in the nursing research journals of the U.S. is far less than the average number of citations received by research articles published from other smaller European coun-tries. The average number of citations received by each research article published from Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands are 28.67, 28.01, and 23.51. The U.S., U.K., and Australia, which otherwise are the three leading nursing research countries in the world, have on average received 15.17, 13.71, and 13.06 citations per research article, respectively. Brazil stands at the bottom of the table with an average 6.64 citations per research article (Figure 2).

Self-citation is equally a practice prevalent among

38


Table 2. Leading Research Countries in Nursing across the World

Rank Country Documents(Share %)

Citable docu-ments (Share %)

Citations(Share %)

Self-Citations (Share %)

Avg. Cita-tions per

Document

Avg. Self-Citations

per Document

H index

H index

1 United States 193819 (35.21) 171586 (34.69) 2940245 (37.15) 1425604 (57.93) 15.17 7.36 323

2 United Kingdom 61730 (11.21) 52419 (10.60) 846269 (10.69) 223598 (9.09) 13.71 3.62 215

3 Australia 26168 (4.75) 23228 (4.70) 341667 (4.32) 81210 (3.30) 13.06 3.10 161

4 France 25265 (4.59) 22614 (4.57) 249586 (3.15) 48000 (1.95) 9.88 1.90 148

5 Canada 24794 (4.50) 22186 (4.49) 406479 (5.14) 81663 (3.32) 16.39 3.29 138

6 Germany 23082 (4.19) 20561 (4.16) 323890 (4.09) 74268 (3.02) 14.03 3.22 165

7 Spain 16289 (2.96) 13860 (2.80) 197624 (2.50) 52237 (2.12) 12.13 3.21 123

8 Brazil 13050 (2.37) 12507 (2.53) 86638 (1.09) 34046 (1.38) 6.64 2.61 123

9 Japan 12907 (2.34) 12026 (2.43) 196953 (2.49) 49731 (2.02) 15.26 3.85 141

10 Italy 12761 (2.32) 11406 (2.31) 241581 (3.05) 46571 (1.89) 18.93 3.65 157

11 Netherlands 12239 (2.22) 11341 (2.29) 287747 (3.64) 48579 (1.97) 23.51 3.97 74

12 Sweden 10185 (1.85) 9660 (1.95) 219906 (2.78) 41607 (1.69) 21.59 4.09 131

13 South Korea 9935 (1.80) 9739 (1.97) 77289 (0.98) 19182 (0.78) 7.78 1.93 75

14 China 9294 (1.69) 8965 (1.81) 78867 (1.00) 22909 (0.93) 8.49 2.46 74

15 Taiwan 6219 (1.13) 6017 (1.22) 61702 (0.78) 13373 (0.54) 9.92 2.15 120

16 Switzerland 6074 (1.10) 5437 (1.10) 134317 (1.70) 13100 (0.53) 22.11 2.16 65

17 Finland 4863 (0.88) 4631 (0.94) 139404 (1.76) 17495 (0.71) 28.67 3.60 129

18 Denmark 4684 (0.85) 4403 (0.89) 131198 (1.66) 18302 (0.74) 28.01 3.91 125

19 Norway 4535 (0.82) 4311 (0.87) 89358 (1.13) 14191 (0.58) 19.70 3.13 104

20 Belgium 4474 (0.81) 4129 (0.83) 90179 (1.14) 12167 (0.49) 20.16 2.72 100

21 India 4216 (0.77) 3933 (0.80) 50186 (0.63) 15905 (0.65) 11.90 3.77 69

22 Rest of the World 63907 (11.61) 59648 (12.06) 723478 (9.14) 107207 (4.36) 11.32 1.68

Total 550490 494607 7914563 2460945



Fig. 2 Average citations per publication

15.1713.06 14.03

6.64

18.9321.59

9.92

28.67

19.7

11.9

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

Uni

ted

Stat

es

Uni

ted

King

dom

Aus

tral

ia

Fran

ce

Cana

da

Ger

man

y

Spai

n

Braz

il

Japa

n

Italy

Net

herla

nds

Swed

en

Sout

h Ko

rea

Chin

a

Taiw

an

Switz

erla

nd

Finl

and

Den

mar

k

Nor

way

Belg

ium

Indi

a

researchers across the globe. Under self-citations, authors generally cite their own previously published work in their new research, and the trend has moved far beyond author self-citation. These days, the prac-tice of self-citation is more prevalent among publishers who press authors to include a few references from similar work published in the journal they intend to publish their research results in. This helps to inflate the journal’s impact factor and h-index. The United States is the world’s largest self-citing country, as of the total self-citations received by nursing research articles at the global level, 57.93% are alone from the U.S. The U.S. is distantly followed by the U.K. and Canada with a global self-citation share percentage of 9.09% and 3.32%, respectively, while at the global level, of the total citations received by nursing publications during the period of study, 31.09% are self-citations (Table 2).

The distribution of nursing research publications at the continental or regional level reflects that the

research output from a particular region or continent depends more on type and kind of research infra-structure available in each individual country within a particular region. The U.S. and Canada are the only countries from North America which are active in nursing research, but given the research contribution of these two countries in nursing, North America is the world’s leading continent, which has contributed the maximum 39.71% of total global nursing research output during the period of study. On the contrary, 52 countries from Africa are actively involved with nurs-ing research, but their contribution to global nursing research during the period of study remained the low-est, viz., 1.38%. Western Europe is the second largest region to contribute to nursing research with 36.08%, followed by Asia and the Pacific region with their individual contributions of 9.64% and 5.49%. Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe are the other regions of the world which have contributed to

40


Table 3. Distribution of Nursing Publications at Continental and Regional Levels

Rank Region No of Countries(Share %)

Documents(Share %)

Citable Docu-ments (Share %)

Citations(Share %)

Self-Citations(Share %)

Avg. Citations per Docu-

ment

Avg. Self-Cita-tions per

Docu-ment

1 Northern America 02 (0.90) 218614 (39.71) 193773 (39.18) 3346727 (42.29) 1507267 (61.25) 15.31 6.89

2 Western Europe 26 (12.30) 198612 (36.08) 176189 (35.62) 3135489 (39.62) 633684 (25.75) 15.79 3.19

3 Asia Region 32 (15.10) 53083 (9.64) 50557 (10.22) 578464 (7.31) 138797 (5.64) 10.90 2.61

4 Pacific Region 17 (8.00) 30199 (5.49) 26721 (5.40) 402012 (5.08) 88134 (3.58) 13.31 2.92

5 Latin America 43 (20.30) 21083 (3.83) 20136 (4.07) 175569 (2.22) 46667 (1.90) 8.33 2.21

6 Middle East 16 (7.50) 13502 (2.45) 12656 (2.56) 127416 (1.61) 22750 (0.92) 9.44 1.68

7 Eastern Europe 23 (10.90) 7817 (1.42) 7381 (1.49) 81151 (1.03) 11064 (0.45) 10.38 1.42

8 Africa 52 (24.60) 7580 (1.38) 7194 (1.45) 67735 (0.86) 12582 (0.51) 8.94 1.66

Total 211 550490 494607 7914563 2460945 14.38 4.47

nursing research by 3.83%, 2.45%, and 1.42% respec-tively (Table 3).

The citations and self-citations received by nursing publications are almost in proportion to each other. North America and Eastern Europe are the two lead-ing regions which, apart from being the two leading regions of the world to contribute the maximum number of research articles, are also the leading re-gions which have received the maximum number of citations and self-citations against the research articles published.

India’s contribution to global nursing research is not that encouraging when compared to the research con-tribution of other leading nursing research countries of the world. On average nursing research in India during the period of study has grown at 9.77% annu-ally, which is better by 2.41% when compared with the average annual corresponding growth (AACG) of nursing research articles at the global level. India’s contribution to global nursing research output during the period of study remained 0.76%, which is far less when compared with the research contribution of oth-er countries in the field of nursing research (Table 4).

Of the total citations received by nursing research

articles at the global level, India had a share of 0.63%, while the share of self-citations remained 0.65%. Of the total citations received by research articles pub-lished from India 31.69% are self-citations, which is 0.60% less than the global self-citation percentage for the same period. On average, each nursing publication in India has received 11.90 citations per publication, which on average is 2.48 citations less than the average citations received by nursing research articles at global level. Accordingly on average, each Indian nursing re-search article has received 3.77 self-citations each pub-lication, which is 0.70 citations less than the average global self-citations received by each nursing research article.

On average, 23.22% of the total nursing research output from India is based on international collabora-tion, while at regional level (Asia Region) India’s con-tribution to nursing research output remained 9.23%, with 0.58% at the global level. Given the magnanimity of India, its population size, and its skilled human re-sources in both biomedical and paramedical sciences, the contribution made by the country to global nursing research output during the period of study is not that encouraging compared to what it should have been.



Table 4. India’s Contribution to Nursing Research at Global Level

Year Documents(ACG %)

Citable Docu-ments

(ACG %)Cites

(Share %)Self Cites(Share %)

Citations per Doc.

Self Cita-tions per

Doc.

%age Interna-

tional Collabo-

ration

%age Share Asia

%age Share World

1996 78 (-) 78 (-) 1430 (2.85) 555 (3.49) 18.33 7.12 17.95 11.56 0.41

1997 83 (6.41) 80 (2.56) 1018 (2.03) 332 (2.09) 12.27 4.00 9.64 11.53 0.42

1998 77 (-7.22) 73 (-8.75) 1529 (3.05) 544 (3.42) 19.86 7.06 14.29 10.10 0.38

1999 101 (31.16) 95 (30.13) 1109 (2.21) 347 (2.18) 10.98 3.44 18.81 12.07 0.47

2000 91 (-9.90) 89 (-6.31) 1860 (3.71) 584 (3.67) 20.44 6.42 10.99 9.44 0.41

2001 84 (-7.6) 83 (-6.74) 2563 (5.11) 994 (6.25) 30.51 11.83 14.29 8.74 0.36

2002 122 (45.23) 122 (46.98) 2925 (5.83) 1060 (6.66) 23.98 8.69 12.3 11.23 0.51

2003 137 (12.29) 129 (5.73) 3395 (6.76) 1138 (7.15) 24.78 8.31 24.82 10.83 0.56

2004 129 (-5.83) 127 (-1.55) 3939 (7.85) 1432 (9.00) 30.53 11.10 19.38 9.66 0.49

2005 170 (31.78) 158 (24.40) 3549 (7.07) 1074 (6.75) 20.88 6.32 25.29 11.02 0.59

2006 211 (24.11) 201 (27.21) 3202 (6.38) 1262 (7.93) 15.18 5.98 21.8 9.67 0.57

2007 243 (15.16) 225 (11.94) 4682 (9.33) 1702 (10.70) 19.27 7.00 29.63 8.31 0.58

2008 227 (-6.58) 212 (-5.77) 3316 (6.61) 1085 (6.82) 14.61 4.78 25.11 7.19 0.53

2009 280 (23.34) 263 (24.05) 4151 (8.27) 1038 (6.53) 14.83 3.71 28.57 7.89 0.66

2010 282 (0.71) 267 (1.52) 3405 (6.78) 857 (5.39) 12.07 3.04 29.79 7.13 0.65

2011 307 (8.86) 289 (8.23) 2973 (5.92) 671 (4.22) 9.68 2.19 30.29 7.35 0.69

2012 364 (18.56) 335 (15.91) 2546 (5.07) 577 (3.63) 6.99 1.59 29.12 7.97 0.82

2013 373 (2.47) 342 (2.08) 1533 (3.05) 403 (2.53) 4.11 1.08 29.76 7.38 0.80

2014 441 (18.23) 396 (15.78) 878 (1.75) 189 (1.19) 1.99 0.43 38.10 8.17 0.91

2015 416 (-5.6) 369 (-6.81) 183 (0.36) 61 (0.38) 0.44 0.15 34.62 7.48 0.91

Total (avg.)* 4216 (9.77)* 3933 (9.02)* 50186 15905 11.90 3.77 23.22 9.23 0.58

RoW 546274 490674 7864377 2445039 14.39 4.47

World 550490 494607 7914563 2460945 14.38 4.47

ACG% - Annual Corresponding Growth Percentage; Avg. – Average

42


6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

There is a steady increase in the global nursing re-search output. Nursing publications since 1996 have grown in number by 297.95% by the year 2015 at an average annual corresponding growth of 7.36%, which is quite encouraging. If we look at the growth of ar-ticles and journals in nursing during the last decade, viz., between 2006-2015, then in 2006 28,952 research articles were published in as many as 422 nursing jour-nals, while in 2015 45,407 research articles were pub-lished in 575 journals, which means research articles in nursing during the decade grew by 56.83% in number, while journals indexed by SCImago in nursing during the same period grew by nearly 36.25% (SCImago Lab, 2015).

Nearly 90% of the global nursing research output has been reported by the 20 leading countries of the world, while the remaining 10% was reported from the remaining 192 countries of the world. The U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Australia, Germany, Spain, Ja-pan, Italy, and Netherlands are the world’s ten leading research countries in the field of nursing research, constituting nearly 75% of the global nursing research output. Countries like Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, and India are at the bottom of the table, as each of these countries during the period of the study contributed less than 1% of the total global nursing research output. This disproportionate distribution of nursing research output is an area of concern, and in order to have a sustainable and robust health sector all across the globe with a promising future, there is a far greater need to work towards the promotion of nurs-ing research at the global level.

The North America, Western Europe, Asia, and Pa-cific regions are the ones which can be considered as actively involved with nursing research and are some-what the developed regions of the world on this front, while on the contrary regions like Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Eastern Europe are the re-gions which can be considered as devoid of having a robust nursing health sector. If North America on one hand has contributed 39.71% of the total global re-search output, Africa on the other has made a meagre contribution of 1.38%, which is nearly 3,000 times less than that of North America. There is far greater need to reduce the regional reliance on each other both at a

practice and research level. The disproportionate growth and distribution of

nursing research output across different regions is an area of concern. As for North America, it is only the U.S. and Canada which are actively contributing to nursing research, while the remaining countries from the continent or region appear to rely heavily on the U.S. and Canada for the latest developments in nursing research. On average, each nursing research country in the world has published 2,596 research articles during the period of study at an average of 129 research ar-ticles each year, while at a regional level, on average, 5,465 articles were published by each nursing research country each year from North America, with 381 arti-cles by each country each year from Western Europe, 82 articles by each country each year from Asia, 88 from the Pacific region, 24 from Latin America, 42 from the Middle East, 17 from Eastern Europe, and 7 research articles each year from each African country.

The dominance of developed countries in nursing research output is very much evident, while poor and less developed countries on the other hand, for want of adequate resources and other infrastructure, are not able to even meet their individual requirements, with the result that these countries are not able to have a sustainable health sector. The developed nations have a better role to play in bailing out the poor and devel-oping countries of their backyard so as to enable them to meet their research requirements. Brazil, Sweden, South Korea, China, Switzerland, Taiwan, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, and India are some of the upcoming nursing research countries of the world. These nation states, apart from meeting their own re-quirements, are supposed to reach out to those nation states which require their services and support.

As of date, the fact remains that 75% of the total global nursing research output during the period of study has come from the world’s ten leading nursing research countries alone, whereas the remaining 25% has come from the remaining 202 nursing research countries of the world. In order to meet the global demand of nursing practices and the research sup-plement thereof required for sustainability, global demand cannot be met by the research activities of the world’s ten leading nursing research countries alone. There is a far greater need for the other research coun-tries of the world to strive harder to raise their research



standards not only by making their own health sector sustainable, but also by looking beyond the borders of their own country.

China and India are the two most populous coun-tries of the world. Both these countries till the recent past used to term their populations as a curse, but both these countries have realized the true potential of their human resource, which they now believe is their greatest blessing in order to turn their countries into developed and powerful nations. India and China have become the leading markets of human resources and the nursing profession is no exception. Nursing profes-sionals from both these countries are in great demand across the global populace and the world too is looking at these two nations for meeting their biomedical and paramedical requirements.

India is one of the leading countries in the world fulfilling the demand for nursing professionals from various countries. Trained and skilled nursing profes-sionals from India are in great demand across Europe and the Middle East. Apart from fulfilling the demand for nursing professionals from various countries, In-dia is also one of the leading countries involved with training, research, and teaching in nursing. India has to play a much bigger role in nursing research and for that, the institutions involved in the teaching and training of nursing and practicing paramedical and nursing professionals should be motivated to under-take research activities.

The distribution of nursing research at the global level is neither in proportion to global nursing practic-es nor in proportion to global nursing requirements, given the demand for nursing professionals all across the globe. The disproportionate research output in this particular paramedical science is bound to result in unsustainable nursing practices at the global level, and this is something which is very much prevalent across the different countries of the world.

The recording of tacit knowledge from well-trained nursing professionals is going to help a great deal in attaining the larger objectives of the nursing profes-sion. It is equally desirable to involve and promote the nursing professionals to pursue research activities in their desired area. Countries that are rich in nursing knowledge and research should extend all support and cooperation to nations which require assistance in de-veloping better nursing practices.

REFERENCES

Allen, M. P., Jacobs, S. K., & Levy, J. R. (2006). Mapping the literature of nursing: 1996-2000. J Med Libr As-soc, 94(2), 206-220.

Beal, J. A., & Betz, C. L. (1992). Intervention studies in pediatric nursing research: A decade of review. Pe-diatr Nurs, 18(6), 586-590.

Bosworth, D. L. (1978). The rate of obsolescence of tech-nical knowledge- A note. The Journal of Industrial Economics, 26(3), 273-273. doi:10.2307/2097871

Davis, P. M. (2013). What is the life span of a research article. The Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved from https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/12/18/what-is-the-lifespan-of-a-research-article/

Dilorio, C., Yeager, K. A., Donahue, B. H., Wasserman, J., Postier, A., & Broderick, L. (2004). An evaluation of neuroscience nursing research published during the Decade of the Brain. J Neurosci Nurs, 36(2), 58-66, 71. doi:10.1097/01376517-200404000-00002

Estabrooks, C. A., Winther, C., & Derksen, L. (2004). Mapping the field: Abibliometric analysis of the research utilization literature in nursing. Nurs Res, 53(5), 293-303. doi:10.1097/00006199-200409000-00003

Jordan, S., Knight, J., & Pointon, D. (2004). Monitoring adverse drug reactions: Scales, profiles, and check-lists. Int Nurs Rev, 51(4), 208-221. doi:10.1111/j.1466-7657.2004.00251.x

Mendoza-Parra, S., Paravic-Klijn, T., Muñoz-Muñoz, A. M., Barriga, O. A., & Jiménez-Contreras, E. (2009). Visibility of Latin American nursing research (1959-2005). Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 41(1), 54-63. doi:10.1111/j.1547-5069.2009.01251.x

Molassiotis, A., Gibson, F., Kelly, D., Richardson, A., Dabbour, R., Ahmad, A., & Kearney, N. (2006). A systematic review of worldwide cancer nursing research: 19... : Cancer nursing. Cancer Nursing, 29(6), 431-440.

Moody, L. E., Wilson, M. E., Smyth, K., Schwartz, R., Tittle, M., & Van Cott, M. L. (1988). Analysis of a decade of nursing practice research: 1977-1986. Nurs Res, 37(6), 374-379. doi:10.1097/00006199-198811000-00012

Murphy, E., & Freston, M. S. (1991). An analysis of theory-research linkages in published gerontologic nursing studies, 1983-1989. ANS Adv Nurs Sci,

44


13(4), 1-13. doi:10.1097/00012272-199106000-00003

Palese, A., Basone, D., & Mestroni, F. (2014). Neurosci-ence nursing research: trend analysis from 1989 to 2010. J Neurosci Nurs, 46(3), 187-195. doi:10.1097/JNN.0000000000000051

Pardo, C., Reolid, M., Delicado, M. V., Mallebrera, E., & Garcia-Meseguer, M. J. (2001). Nursing research in Spain: Bibliometrics of references of research papers in the decade 1985-1994. J Adv Nurs, 35(6), 933-943. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.2001.01931.x

Peng, J., & Hui, Z. Y. (2011). Nursing research in three regions in China: Abibliometric study. International Nursing Review, 58(1), 21-25. doi:10.1111/j.1466-7657.2010.00873.x

Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2009). International differenc-es in nursing research, 2005-2006. J Nurs Scholarsh, 41(1), 44-53. doi:10.1111/j.1547-5069.2009.01250.x

SCImago Lab. (2015). SCImago journal & country rank. Retrieved from http://www.scimagojr.com.

Scott, S. D., Profetto-McGrath, J., Estabrooks, C. A., Winther, C., Wallin, L., & Lavis, J. N. (2010). Map-ping the knowledge utilization field in nursing from 1945 to 2004: A bibliometric analysis. Worl-dviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 7(4), 226-237. doi:10.1111/j.1741-6787.2010.00197.x

Smith, D. R., & Hazelton, M. (2008). Bibliometrics, cita-tion indexing, and the journals of nursing. Nursing & Health Sciences, 10(4), 260-265. doi:10.1111/j.1442-2018.2008.00414.x

Traynor, M., Rafferty, A. M., & Lewison, G. (2001). Endogenous and exogenous research? Findings from a bibliometric study of UK nursing research. J Adv Nurs, 34(2), 212-222. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.2001.01747.x

VanCott, M. L., Tittle, M. B., Moody, L. E., & Wilson, M. E. (1991). Analysis of a decade of critical care nurs-ing practice research: 1979 to 1988. Heart Lung, 20(4), 394-397.

Wilkes, L., Borbasi, S., Hawes, C., Stewart, M., & May, D. (2002). Measuring the outputs of nursing research and development in Australia: The researchers. Aust J Adv Nurs, 19(4), 15-20.

Zhang, X. C., Huang, D. S., & Li, F. (2011). Cancer nurs-ing research output and topics in the first decade of the 21st century: Results of a bibliometric and co-word cluster analysis. Asian Pac J Cancer Prev,

12(8), 2055-2058.

45

Synchronous and Asynchronous Engagement in Virtual Library Services as Learning Support Systems from the Perspectives of Post-Graduate Students: A Case Study

Open Access

Accepted date: March 6, 2018Received date: November 8, 2017

*Corresponding Author: Reysa Alenzuela Expert-Manager, Nazarbayev UniversityAstana, KazakhstanE-mail: [email protected]


ⓒ Reysa Alenzuela, Yelizaveta Kamilova, 2018

ABSTRACTThe global information economy is transforming the way people connect with each other, learn new things, and contribute to the knowledge society. With the online platform, library services have also expanded beyond face to face interaction. Although studies of virtual reference services have been made in different parts of the world, a case study discussing various forms of online reference engagement in Kazakhstan has not been written. While most of the theories on connectivism emphasize the context of instruction, the researchers of this paper discussed the tenets as they relate to online engagement. Applying the theory of connectivism, this paper explores through a mixed method the use of various online platforms to enhance engagement connecting library users to infor-mation. Findings revealed that differences in patterns of interactions as to platforms, types of queries, and users reveal that students, faculty, and other members of the academic community served by the library have various preferences for communication. The case study further showed that respondents have not maximized the use of VLS but interest in using both synchronous and asynchronous services is clear. Finding connections between sources of information, creating useful information patterns, is essential in learning. Amplifying awareness on the use of VLS giving emphasis to the unique features of each service is useful in order to enable students to see how this platform facilitates learning.

Keywords: virtual library services, mediated communication, connectivism, online engagement

Reysa Alenzuela * Expert-Manager, Nazarbayev UniversityAstana, KazakhstanE-mail: [email protected]

Yelizaveta KamilovaExpert-Manager, Nazarbayev UniversityAstana, KazakhstanE-mail: [email protected]



46


1. INTRODUCTION

With the growing web presence, online engage-ment becomes essential in the knowledge society. This creates a participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009) where netizens have the opportunity to become knowledge creators and libraries play a significant role not just as knowledge curators but also as co-creators or facilita-tors of learning.

As the information ecosystem becomes more perva-sive, information and technology become the essential tools for national development. In Kazakhstan, a gov-ernment program dubbed “Information Kazakhstan - 2020” (Ministry of Information and Communication, 2016) was developed, preparing the educational sphere for transitions in the knowledge society. This govern-ment initiative amplifies the online presence of libraries in Kazakhstan.

The indispensable presence of online platforms along with the growing demand for reliable information has amplified the value of delivering online services in teaching and learning. Thus, Virtual Library Services (VLS) are becoming a reality and an active part of libraries’ evolution on the Internet (AlEnezi, 2012). Specifically, the various forms of mediated communi-cation adopted in VLS have distinct features that can distinctively address the needs of students, scholars, and researchers. However, the dearth of published studies in CIS countries, specifically in Kazakhstan, on how online engagement supports academic endeavors of students prompts the researchers to initiate this case study.

VLS has been recognized as an important compo-nent in a hyper-connected society. The Nazarbayev University Library (NUL) is the only library in Ka-zakhstan which has the most virtual presence, which includes:

➢ Library portal➢ Library page on university web page➢ Online catalog➢ Ask a librarian service➢ Interlibrary loan service➢ LibGuides➢ Presence in social networkNUL had these programs for less than a year; hence,

looking at its impact can provide insights to improve service. This study serves as a starting point for dis-

cussion as the researchers seek to explore the value of online communication in reference service in the com-plex learning process in a rapidly changing social digi-tal world. While most of the theories on connectivism emphasize the context of instruction, the researchers attempt to discuss the tenets as they relate to online engagement. Furthermore, this study hopes to inspire libraries in Kazakhstan to enhance VLS seeing the val-ue of diverse VLS platforms to support learning.

2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This empirical study considers the effectiveness of synchronous and asynchronous engagement at Nazarbayev University Library. It attempts to analyze patterns of usage of VLS and probes into perceptions of post-graduate students in business and how this online service supports their information and research needs, that ultimately provides a perspective and discussion for enhances learning. Specifically, it aims to answer the following questions:

1. What are the current patterns of usage on various VLS platforms?

2. What do post-graduate students perceive to be useful among VLS platforms in order to find in-formation and seek assistance for their research at Nazarbayev University Library?

3. What are users’ perceptions on the effectiveness of synchronous and asynchronous conversations in VLS provided by Nazarbayev University Library?

4. What are the areas that need to be improved in VLS in Nazarbayev University Library?

5. How can synchronous and asynchronous conver-sations in VLS be improved to enhance connec-tivity between students and librarians that will amplify instructional and research support for post-graduate students?

3. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

The pressing demand to have effective and fully functional VLS has been emphasized by the govern-ment within its thrust so that by the end of 2020 al-most all educational organizations will have access to e-libraries (Kapezovich & Toktarbekovna, 2014). Aside


Synchronous and Asynchronous Engagement

from teachers who act as facilitators, numerous media and social media interactions generate information and knowledge on the 21st century learning platform. In-formatization as a concept in Kazakhstan has become a growing research topic in education (Mynbayeva & Anarbek, 2016) that recognizes the role of technology in learning. Knowledge is now obtained through in-teraction with the network community (Mynbayeva & Anarbek, 2016, p. 262). Various didactic paradigms describe the evolving practices but one concept that this study anchors upon is connectivism. Olle (2012, cited in Molnar & Szuts, 2014) posits that, “with the interconnection of the society and Web 2.0, a new type of education emerges -- the ‘connectivism’ which offers new ways of learning that was never seen before” (p. 107).

3.1. Virtual Library Services and the Theory of Connectivism

VLS works within the idea that “knowledge that re-sides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning” (Siemens, 2005). Although connectivism as a concept has an orientation towards the discussion of the new role of educators, it can be gleaned that it is strongly connected to VLS as interaction is a means to an end, which is teaching and learning support. Below is a paradigm that illustrates Siemens’ idea that

learning can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing (Figure 1).

In his paper, Siemens expounds that Google Scholar, Scopus, and open access journals offer increased access to academic resources; an extension to more informal approaches such as regular Internet search and Wikipe-dia. Social software (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, instant messaging, Skype, Ning) provide opportunities for learners to create, dialogue about, and disseminate information. Theoretically, VLS is a platform that in-volves all the above mentioned technologies and net-works where new information is continually acquired.

By following the underlying principles advocated in contemporary learning theories, such as connectivism, librarians can work with teaching faculty to provide students with a collaborative learning experience that extends well beyond the library classroom. Connectiv-ism has already been adopted in library instruction.

The case of Wichita University is one example apply-ing connectivism in the library. Mallon (2013) shared her experience as an instruction coordinator exploring ways to heighten students’ learning experiences and promote hybrid instructional models that support stu-dents in blended learning environments. To amplify learning, libguides for specific courses were created.

Fig. 1 Paradigm on learning and knowing networks by Siemens

48


Piazza, an educational learning site, was used to open more engagement with their classmates and instructor in a familiar environment. By designing library re-search instruction in conjunction with the guidelines of the connectivist learning theory the authors recom-mend that librarians can easily provide opportunities for students to collaborate with their peers and librar-ians at their own pace in social, digital environments where they already feel at ease.

Several case studies also point out uses of the theory of connectivism with library work. Highlighting the digital environment, moreover, this study ventures to see learning support of libraries beyond the context of instruction. The researchers in this study further ad-vance that online engagement of librarians in various forms also applies the theory of connectivism as it can provide opportunities for students to collaborate with librarians.

3.2. Current Studies on VLSVarious studies around the globe have been conduct-

ed about VLS. Several researchers analyzed different aspects of VLS such as user perception of Virtual Library Services (Cummings, Cummings, & Frederik-sen, 2007). Duncan and Gerrard (2011) studied about integrating virtual reference service in the academic library; while Montalvo (2016) looked into the impor-tance of self-service among the users. Moreover, how the digital library supports research collaborations (Aghakhani, Lagzian, & Hazarika, 2013), the changing e-research environment (Zhao, 2009), and library avail-ability within virtual space (Elliott & Probets, 2011) were also some of the major aspects in VLS research.

While most of the studies in VLS are anchored on information needs (Susetyo-Salim & Septiana, 2018) or usability (Nicol & Crook, 2013; Mu, Dimitroff, Jor-dan, & Burclaff, 2011) this study analyzes the level of interactions in the library and how connections can facilitate learning.

Specifically, in terms of synchronous and asynchro-nous engagements, Lee (2004) made a comparative analysis of e-mail and chat reference services; while Lietzau and Mann (2009) discuss about real-time syn-chronous instructions with students in Taiwan where four different scenarios are presented, with assessment results gathered from surveys and debriefings. Sce-narios range from use in an online-only class, to one-

shot sessions with faculty and students, supplementing week-long library instruction sessions, and one-on-one sessions. Individual instructions were concerned with making effective use of the librarian and student’s time (Arvin & Kaiser, 2012). Studies on drop-in style synchronous online instruction (Steiner, 2011, cited in Arvin & Kaiser, 2012) and research describing the Internet Video Virtual Classroom by Quinn, Regan, and Schoech (2008) suggested potential strategies to deal with problems while waiting for technological improvements. Moreover, a study of Pearce, Collard, and Whatley (2010) on SMS transactions exhibited a positive result from users supporting the conclusion that users do not expect a purely synchronous service, although faster response times and thoroughness of answers do show a relationship with higher user satis-faction.

The researchers propound that, while information and technology lay the ground for new ideas and inno-vations, the presence of experts (information special-ists) that can lead to the right information is still essen-tial. Synchronous and asynchronous communication is not only important in the classroom. Information exchanges in the library are equally as important to en-hance learning. A common scenario in libraries could be: 1) Librarians and faculty exchange emails on the materials to be used in classes; 2) Librarians prepare a list of resources that can be used by faculty and send them to the faculty; 3) Faculty call the library to inquire for available resources in the library; 4) Students chat or call the librarians when they cannot find informa-tion in real time; and 5) A researcher checks the policy of the library for possibilities of finding information through microforms. These are just a few of the situa-tions where librarians and the learning community in-teract. It brings to the point that the library has existing online communications.

4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This study adopts a mixed method of research inte-grating quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis to understand the research pur-pose (Creswell et. al, 2011). This study collected, ana-lyzed, and interpreted quantitative and qualitative data in a single study to investigate the current situation.



The exploratory-quantitative-qualitative-inferen-tial study employs an embedded design (ED). ED is a mixed methods design in which one data set provides a supportive, secondary role in a study based primar-ily on the other data type (Creswell, et al., 2003). The premises of this design are that a single data set is not sufficient, that different questions need to be answered, and that each type of question requires different types of data (Creswell et al., 2003, p. 67). With such, this study first looked into the current state of online en-gagement. Then, a case of specific groups of students were asked to delve deeper into the questions.

4.1. Data GatheringThe first phase analyzed the current patterns of usage

of various VLS services. Using Springshare Reference Analytics modules of LibAnswers, the researchers culled data gathered since the adoption of the last VLS, which was April 2017. This application tracks the ques-tions asked and answered at the library, regardless of user or librarian location. It integrates questions asked in the LibAnswers system with those asked at all ser-vice points, in all formats.

While other VLS have commenced earlier, to have a common chronological comparison the researchers set the period (April to December 2017) to be analyzed. While the analytics have more categories, the emphasis of the study focused on 1. Type of query, 2. User (where the query came from), and 3. From which school/of-fice/ department the user is affiliated. Since the project has not reached one calendar year, the study did not delve deeper into inferential statistical data. As the main goal is to test the dynamics of conversation and prospective value of these conversations to support learning, the second phase, which is a case study, is ex-plored to support or elaborate the primary quantitative data presented.

The second phase intended to have an in-depth examination of VLS. Using a Focus Group (FG) the researcher probed the utilization, effectiveness, and impact of virtual services as perceived by students in the Graduate School of Business. Moreover, a group interview is useful to support broad objectives of de-scription. Qualitative interviewing may play a vital role in combination with other methods for conceptual development and the testing of concepts. For example, insights gained from qualitative interviewing may im-

prove the quality of survey design and interpretation (Gaskell, 2000).

The selection of respondents of the study consid-ered the manageability of the participants in terms of number. GSB post-graduate students are also deemed appropriate to provide an objective assessment as they are considered active users of the library. GSB is the newest school established in Nazarbayev University and is where one of the researchers serves as Liaison Librarian. First-hand knowledge about the group was one of the considerations for selecting the group of re-spondents.

The FG interview utilized 10-item interview ques-tions during the discussion. This exploratory assess-ment hopes to be expanded and adopted in the univer-sity and in Kazakhstan in the future as the demand for VLS grows.

As FGD is the selected method of gathering empiri-cal data on the topic, a 10-item open-ended interview questionnaire was drafted by the researchers. To en-sure that the contents are comprehensible and fit for the group of respondents, it went through a content validation process. Three content validators were re-quested to review the items: two professors from the department and one librarian who developed the VLS in Nazarbayev University.

25 post-graduate students from GSB were inter-viewed about their experience using VLS. The re-searchers requested participants to meet at a certain date for the interview. Each question was raised and everyone openly volunteered to share their thoughts. Clarifications and follow-up questions were also made. Responses were recorded and transcribed. Notes on relevant answers were transcribed and summarized according to the topics.

5. DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS, AND DISCUSSION

5.1. Nazarbayev University Library VLSNazarbayev University Library VLS, dubbed as

Ask-a-Librarian service, was completed in April 2017. Online platforms include chat, phone, email, FAQ, and Make-an-Appointment via Skype. The software for instant messaging was updated to Springshare LibChat and incorporated through a widget to the page as well

50


as in the library main page, EDS, subject librarians pages, and in other pages. The email <[email protected]> service was redirected to the dashboard of LibAnswers software, and librarians are now required to answer the questions through this interface. This brings changes to librarians’ workflow but also includes the questions submitted to the EDS interface. The change was necessary so that all questions from pa-trons come to one place. Buttons are included that link to subject librarians’ profiles, a short guide for starting research, and information on how to call via telephone. This service is provided in both formats: online (via Skype) and face-to-face. A booking calendar and a list of seven subject librarians is available for reserving on the library portal. FAQ services were also updated with the Springshare software LibAnswers. A widget in the form of a search box and a tag cloud was incorporated in the Ask-A-Librarian page (Figure 2).

1. Patterns of UsageAsk-a-Librarian services is a combination of face to

face and online interaction provided by the reference department for reference assistance. As to the virtual presence or service with virtual components, the fol-lowing services are available:

a. The online chat is an instant messaging platform for quick online reference to users. The chat service is available during the operating hours of reference librarians. Transcripts of the chat conversation can be downloaded or sent to the user’s email upon request. This service is also made visible on almost all the parts of the library webpage to quickly assist users.

b. Reference by phone is another way for librarians to provide assistance to common problems and re-quests. Like chat service, telephone queries are attend-ed to during operating hours by reference librarians. Information about how to contact the librarians is pro-

Fig. 2 Nazarbayev University Library Ask-a-Librarian service



vided in the Ask-a-Librarian page.c. Aside from real-time communication, email is an

alternative for face-to-face reference interaction in an online environment to encourage users to connect with librarians on a 24-hour basis. Users are encouraged to consult the Frequently Asked Questions for common inquiries or in case the chat service is offline. Questions are answered in no more than a working day’s timespan.

d. The Ask-a-Librarian Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) service also provides asynchronous reference assistance. Question forms which are answered during office hours or when a reference librarian is available are saved and assigned specific tags for users to check relevant queries when librarians are not online.

e. If the user’s research question cannot be answered satisfactorily through chat, email, phone, or at the reference desk, the Make an Appointment service is offered. Make-an-appointment service is face-to-face or virtual (Skype-based) in depth research assistance and training. Users can make an appointment to any subject librarian who is deemed an expert in the field of research. If the query involves various disciplines, a team of subject librarians gather to discuss and assist the researcher.

An analysis of VLS platforms as to the topic/s fre-quently asked by specific users and from the depart-ment the user belongs is presented below

1a. ChatFigure 3 presents the types of questions mostly

answered by chat. Specific searches rank the highest with 90 (43%) questions answered in chat. Moreover, questions on library policy also are high (73 or 35%) is second and followed by questions on equipment/skills (30 or 14%). As to users (Figure 4), the majority of those who engage in chat are students who take up almost two-thirds of chats (144 or 68%). As to schools who actively interact through chat, the majority are not identified but the Center of Preparatory Studies (CPS) (34 or 16%), Graduate School of Education (GSE) (21 or 10%), and Graduate School of Business (19 or 9%) rank in the top three (Figure 5).

1b. EmailFigure 6 shows that most of the emails are transac-

tion or engagement related to specific searches (1,041 or 76%) which deal mainly with interlibrary loan requests on particularly data, journals, or any informa-tion for research purposes. The main users are faculty (932 or 68%) and students (Figure 7). Data in Figure 8 reveal that most of the queries came from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS) (219 or 16%), GSE (200 or 15%), and School of Science and Technol-ogy (SST) (159 or 12%).

0 30 70 8010 40 9020 50 60

Research/Consultation

Other

Direction/Policy

Equipment/Skills

Specific search

Fig. 3 Type of questions answered by chat

3

15

90

30

73

52


Fig. 5 Schools/department interaction by chat

Fig. 4 User interaction by chat

0 40 120 14020 60 16080 100

Faculty

Staff

Student

Visitor

Alumni

Other

Unknown

19

12

144

5

12

2

17

0 10 3530 405 15 4520 25

GSB

GSE

GSPP

NLA

NUSOM

SEng

SHSS

SMG

SST

CPS

University staff

Library staff

Other

Unknown

19

21

11

6

17

10

18

2

19

34

4

1

7

41



Fig. 7 User Interaction by email

0 200 800 1000400

Faculty

Staff

Student

Visitor

Alumni

Other

Unknown

932

74

336

7

4

7

2

600

Fig. 6 Type of questions answered by email

0 400200 600 1200800 1000

Direction/Policy 185

Equipment/Skills 19

Specific search 1041

Research/Consultation 36

Other 51

54


Fig. 8 Schools/department interaction by email

0 50 150 250200100

GSB

GSE

GSPP

NLA

NUSOM

SEng

SHSS

SMG

SST

CPS

University staff

Library staff

Other

Unknown

81

200

132

107

138

143

219

64

159

23

14

10

22

19

1c. PhoneMost of the queries by phone are about direction or

policy (47 or 35%) and specific searches (45 or 33%) and research consultations (20 or 15%). While specific searches inquire about how to find a database, journal, and any information, research consultations are in-depth queries spanning from literature reviews to ref-erencing/citation (Figure 9). Phone queries are mostly asked by staff, that had almost half of the telephone interactions (55 or 40%); faculty (48 or 35%), and students 10% (18 or 13%) also using the platform as shown in Figure 10. As to the schools or offices using phone queries, Figure 11 revealed that SST (27 or 20%), the library (23 or 17%), and SEng (17 or 13%) mainly use telephone inquiries. “Staff ” includes those who work in the library, both professional and para-profes-sional, as well as the staff from schools. University staff is designated to distinguish those from the Registrar, Human Resource, or University Service management

that do not fall into any of the school categories. It can be gleaned that staff from schools and the library use mostly telephones for inquiries that focus on directions or instructions and (library) policy-related types of questions. Internal phones are the most widely used communication as it comes real time and extension lines are provided for individual staff.

1d. Make-an-Appointment via SkypeVideo appointments are not very popular at the mo-

ment as it is shown in the data (Figure 12) that there is only one specific search query made between 1 April to 31 December 2017. The query came from an alumnus (Figure 13) who graduated in CPS (Figure 14). While the data have shown that this platform is not used very well, implications can be drawn from the result as to the right platform, to whom the video platform can be useful in the future, and so on.



Fig. 9 Type of questions answered by phone

0 2010 30 5040

Direction/Policy 47

Equipment/Skills 10

Specific search 45


Other 13

Fig. 10 User interaction by phone

0 10 40 605020

Faculty

Staff

Student

Visitor

Alumni

Other

Unknown

48

55

18

1

9

2

3

30

56


Fig. 11 Schools/department interaction by phone

0 5 15 30252010

GSB

GSE

GSPP

NLA

NUSOM

SEng

SHSS

SMG

SST

CPS

University staff

Library staff

Other

Unknown

11

14

2

0

6

17

1

7

27

7

8

23

2

4

Fig. 12 Type of questions answered via Skype

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.21

Other 0


Specific search 1

Equipment/Skills 0

Direction/Policy 0



Fig. 14 Schools/department interaction via Skype

0 0.2 0.6 1.210.80.4

GSB

GSE

GSPP

NLA

NUSOM

SEng

SHSS

SMG

SST

CPS

University staff

Library staff

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

Fig. 13 User interaction via Skype

0 0.2 0.8 1.210.4

Faculty

Staff

Student

Visitor

Alumni

Other

Unknown

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0.6

58


1e. FAQFAQ is a unique asynchronous platform. The only

way to determine if it is used by NUL users is by views. Reference librarians enter the questions asked by users posting queries. The number of views show the extent of usage of common questions that were compiled and entered. Figure 15 shows a steady range of views. As a form of asynchronous reference, FAQ is only referred by users when chat or email is available. The nature of the platform where they also need to go to the library portal and find this information makes it less pre-ferred.

2. Use, Perceived Importance, and Use of VLS plat-form

Out of the 7 virtual services provided, respondents

only use or mentioned 5 platforms for engagement, namely: phone, chat, Make-an Appointment service, email, and FAQ (Table 1 and 2). As shown in Table 1, almost half of the respondents experienced using the chat service and a number have engaged through Make-an-Appointment, email, and FAQ. As to utiliza-tion, Table 2 further reveals that overall, online conver-sation is not very popular for post-graduate students in the Graduate School of Business. For students, syn-chronous engagement (chat) is more popular. This pat-tern of behavior confirms the statistical data in Figure 4 where a majority of the users are students and Figure 5 where GSB showed active usage. Similar to the case study of Wichita State University, this case study hopes to expound the discussion how collaborative experi-ences can enhance learning.

Fig. 15 FAQ views

0 10 30 807060504020

1-Apr

1-May

1-Jun

1-Jul

1-Aug

1-Sep

1-Oct

1-Nov

1-Dec

49

55

58

63

63

65

65

65

72



3. Perceived Importance of Synchronous and Asynchronous Conversation in VLS

As a number of the respondents have not experi-enced using any of the online conversation platforms, the researchers inquired about how they view the ser-vices after presenting all the online engagement during the interview. Asking them to rank 1 as the most im-portant and 5 as the least important, Table 1 shows that most of the respondents (n=8) deem that chat service is the most important followed by Make-An-Appoint-

ment: “I find chat easy and gives me the closest option to a face-to-face conversation.” Another added that “the chat box is already on the page where when we search on databases. This is better than sending a separate email or getting into the phone.” Another interviewee added, “I would want to make an appointment. I can clarify as [much] I want. I prefer seeing the person, too. It makes me understand more.”

Email (n=6) was also considered the top priority. However, some participants noted, “when we are searching in the middle of the night, what can we do?

Table 1. Use of Different VLS Platforms

Synchronous

Responses Yes % (N=25) No % (N=25)

Phone 0 0 25 100

Chat 10 40 15 60

Make-an-Appointment 3 12 22 88

Asynchronous

Yes % No %

Email 3 12 22 88

FAQ 4 16 21 84

Table 2. Perceived Importance of Synchronous and Asynchronous Conversation in VLS

Rank VLS

Phone Chat Make-An- Appointment Email FAQ

1st 2 8 7 6 2

2nd 3 5 - 2 2

3rd 2 3 3 5 1

4th 5 - 5 1 1

5th 2 - 1 1 4

60


No one will answer us immediately. We can forget.” This infers that they use email as an option for chat. A further comment was added, “[the] chat stops and I cannot connect again. So, I send an email.” Another noted, “when I email, you also call when you receive an email or you discuss in the classroom. So, this is good way to communicate.” Another valuable point men-tioned is, “in email you give links and I have time to apply my knowledge in search [sic].” While immediate response is perceived valuable by respondents, they also deem that responses provided after a few hours can still be useful. Time is not considered by respon-dents to be a huge hindrance.

Those who preferred email see the value of this asyn-chronous conversation as answers are more detailed. Moreover, respondents trust that in working hours, the email responses are almost real-time. While NUL does not provide SMS services yet, the recent study of Pearce, Collard, and Whatley (2010) affirms that users do not expect a purely synchronous service. It can be gleaned that email is used as an option for some who cannot find a way to chat.

4. User Perception on the Effectiveness of Synchro-nous and Asynchronous Conversations

A. Ease of UseVirtual communication has been widely used now-

adays; hence, the researchers attempted to find out how most commonly used virtual communications are adopted by users. In an interview made by researchers, the 25 respondents were asked about how they per-ceive the ease of use of various library services offered. While a majority claim that they do not frequently use any of the online conversations to communicate with librarians or to be able to enhance their library services experience, almost 1/3 have started using email, chat, appointments, and other services, both asynchronous and synchronous, to interact or connect with the li-brary.

Figure 16 shows users’ perception on ease of use of both synchronous and asynchronous connection. Eight respondents find email an easy way to get connected with librarians. They use this platform to ask questions about availability of books or resources, ask help for problems related to research and access, or to send re-quest for materials. Responses transcribed mentioned a few instances:

• “You know I like to email you to ask if the book is available because if it is not, you offer to put it in ILL [InterLibrary-Loan].”

• “I like email because I have chance to explain. Chat is too short and there is waiting time when system is slow.”

• “Calls maybe the least easy to facilitate as there are chances that calls are missed and considering the availability of librarian to answer calls within office hours [sic].”

Chat and Make-an-Appointment are other platforms frequently used. Chat is either embedded in Libguides or at the main page of the library portal. This visibility of an online platform that can address queries in real time is encouraged for all students.

As to Make-an-Appointment, an online platform for real time via Skype is provided in order to enable stu-dents to avail of real time virtual discussion. This was developed to expand ways for real time: “We like to have appointment in person”; “I don’t have Skype in my phone and I need to learn it, maybe if there is no email or chat, I will use it. But I am not techy. I better see you in the library.” On being asked why they are not using the services, one respondent explained that “I believe that librarians might be busy with workshops and oth-er events; so, it can be hard to make an appointment.”

Q&A for students is often used for in-depth research assistance. Specifically, as to impression of participants, one reacted that “it was very easy.” Another GSB stu-dent who has not experienced using this service noted that, “since I haven’t used these yet, according to the explanation which we had, it seems like the service is pretty much easy”; “If I see Q&A in the page, I check it. But there are other questions that are not relevant. I don’t want to tire myself looking for answers.”

Despite the unpopularity of online use, this is adopt-ed by NUL to ensure that users are provided diverse ways for conversation. This confirms the study of Cummings, Cummings, and Frederiksen (2007) which noted that while many within the academic communi-ty are open to the idea of chat-based reference or using chat for some loosely defined “research purposes,” this openness does not necessarily result in high levels of use.

B. Satisfaction with Online EngagementThe value of user-friendly services, which provides



librarian assistance remotely, has been recognized by respondents. Those who have experienced it appreciate that librarians can be reached immediately for help and they get answers quick and short (Figure 17). Some of the respondents who have not used it confirmed that, “according to the presentation, it seems like all is involved into the service.” Another commented that both services are “well-constructed.” When partici-pants were asked about areas for improving VLS in the university, those who were able to use it said that they are fully satisfied and the service is very good. For one respondent who has not experienced using any of the online platforms he commented that “I think it is ok now”; another said that, “I think for [based on] orien-tation it is perfect”; and another said “[I] Don’t know.”

When respondents were asked to give an example where the library had an impact on their work or re-search, one respondent mentioned a specific instance: “when I had a problem with finding a book and access to various journals, the online platform [chat] is use-ful.” Another noted that VLS is very helpful when he/she is studying for final exam and needs to search for a book, and asking a librarian for help saved time. For one respondent who has not used the service yet, he/

she noted, “for this moment, did not ask for help of library, but I will in writing paper.”

Both synchronous and asynchronous communica-tion were found to have potential value for learning support.

5. Areas for Improvement of VLSThe last question posed was how synchronous and

asynchronous conversations in VLS can be improved to enhance connectivity between students and li-brarians that will amplify instructional and research support for post-graduate students and help enhance connectivity in the knowledge society. One respondent broadly replied “very much.” It was further explained by another respondent that “it’s good to have a virtual library, because it’s becoming more convenient” and another explained that this is “access mobility.” A more specific response on informational retrieval mentioned that “some search options are useful for those who have some difficulties in the progress evaluation” and anoth-er said “good to search book or article without going to the library physically. Also can download materials directly [sic].” They think that reference assistance, especially on the technicalities of retrieval, can be ad-

Fig. 16 Perception of GSB students on ease of use

25

10

15

10

5

0Email Phone Chat Make an

AppointmentFAQ

EasyAverageNo Answer

62


Fig. 17 Satisfaction of GSB students on effectiveness of online engagement

18

16

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0Email Phone Chat Make an

AppointmentFAQ

SatisfiedNeutralNo answer

dressed by online conversations in different ways. It can be inferred that the value of VLS has been realized by the group.

One respondent recommended to “make FAQ sec-tion simplified, divide into sections by subject” and another suggested “may be use Skype/WhatsApp if urgent questions arise.”

It can be gleaned that respondents have suggestions to improve both synchronous and asynchronous ser-vice. For real time communication, a recommenda-tion to try out the most commonly used tools such as Skype and WhatsApp was mentioned. Since there is an existing Skype service in Make-an-Appointment, WhatsApp will be taken into consideration. Chat is a quick way for them to get answers on directional que-ries. However, in-depth research may also vary. Library users usually see the need to use various VLS tools when they are already doing a thesis.

Prospects for ConnectivityDifferences in patterns of interactions as to plat-

forms, types of queries, and users reveal that students, faculty, and other members of the academic commu-

nity served by the library have various preferences for communication. While students use mostly chat, which is a form of synchronous communication, faculty members prefer email. Almost all the departments also use the VLS platform with GSE, SST, and SHSS being more active. The GSE is expected to have a higher us-age as this is the first post-graduate school established in the university. The high number of users in SHSS can be attributed to the population of the school, and SST as a pure science research department produces high numbers of research output with experiments.

Post-graduate students in GSB have not maximized the use of VLS but prospects for utilizing the same for academic support are clearly stated in their respons-es. While there is very little user experience, the user participants think that VLS platforms, in general, are useful. Moreover, the respondents’ positive attitude to-wards exploring both synchronous and asynchronous conversations is also a good indicator of their openness to virtual platforms.

VLS is an essential tool in promoting knowledge creation and exchange in a hyper-connected society. As mentioned by respondents, it provides remote access



to users. Through technology, mediated communica-tion is facilitated both in real time and otherwise, so that research assistance and learning support system is enhanced. However, this has not been realized by a majority of the researchers and scholars.

The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required in learning (Siemens, 2004). This is where the library comes as a support system. The usage, positive perception, and interaction imply that both types of engagement in the VLS platform is a way to connect learners to useful information.

Future Directions: Engaging Through VLSVLS should capitalize both on synchronous and

asynchronous communication as the thrust of refer-ence services is geared towards learning and research.

As suggested by the participants, use of WhatsApp in real time can also enhance communication. This platform is most commonly used besides Skype. Voice, accompanied by screen sharing, would seem to offer great promise in an educational setting, especially for remote users unable to interact with the library’s refer-ence and information literacy services in person (Lee, 2004).

The case study of a group of students may not rep-resent the entire university but this group is a starting point to analyze the effectiveness of VLS. Ease of use is one area that is always looked into when adopting a technology-driven service and an on-going systems analysis will be very useful.

• SMS or text messaging should also be considered by Nazarbayev University Library as another op-tion.

• Success stories of VLS users can be a good market-ing strategy to promote the service.

• Promotion of VLS should be the priority of NUL in order to maximize the use of these services. Training on the use of VLS giving emphasis to the unique features of each service may also amplify the awareness level of the academic community.

REFERENCES

AlEnezi, A. (2012). Library 3.0: The art of virtual library services. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/299452604_Library_30_the_art_of_Virtual_Library_services

Anderson, J. Q., Boyles, J. L., & Rainie, L. (2012). The future impact of the Internet on higher education. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-media/Files/Reports/2012/PIP_Future_of_Higher_Ed.pdf

Arvin, S., & Kaiser, A. (2012). Case study of synchro-nous virtual reference in an academic library. Inter-net Reference Services Quarterly, 17(2), 83-93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10875301.2012.718317

Creswell, J. W., Plano Clark, V. L., Gutmann, M. L., & Hanson, W. E. (2003). Advanced mixed methods research designs. In A. Tashakkori & C. Teddlie (Eds.), Handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research (pp. 209-240). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Cummings, J., Cummings, L., & Frederiksen, L. (2007). User preferences in reference services: Virtual ref-erence and academic libraries. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 7(1), 81-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pla.2007.0004

Duncan, V., & Gerrard, A. (2011). All together now!: In-tegrating virtual reference in the academic library. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 50(3), 280-292. Retrieved from https://journals.ala.org/index.php/rusq/article/viewFile/3935/4421

Elliott, E., & Probets, S. (2011). Is there a second life for librarians? The Electronic Library, 29(3), 354-366, https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471111141098

Gaskell, G. (2000). Individual and group interviewing. In M. W. Bauer & G. Gaskell, Qualitative research-ing with text, image and sound (pp. 39-56). London: SAGE. doi:10.4135/9781849209731

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Weigel, M., Clinton, K., & Robison, A. J. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Lee, I. J. (2004). Do virtual reference librarians dream of digital reference questions? A qualitative and quantitative analysis of e‐mail and chat reference. Australian Academic and Research Libraries, 35(2), 95‐110. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048623.2004.10755262

Lietzau, J., & Mann, B. (2009). Breaking out of the asyn-chronous box: Using web conferencing in distance learning. Journal of library & information services

64


in distance learning, 3(3-4), 108-119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15332900903375291

Kapezovich, K., & Toktarbekovna, D. (2014). E-learn-ing in the system of the pedagogical education in Kazakhstan. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 152, 179-183. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.sb-spro.2014.09.177

Ministry of Information and Communication. (2016). Kazakhstan 2020. Retrieved from http://www.mid.gov.kz/en/pages/state-program-information-ka-zakhstan-2020

Molnar, G., & Szuts, Z. (2014). Advanced mobile com-munication and media devices and applications in the base of higher education. eInternational Sympo-sium on Intelligent Systems and Informatics (pp. 169-174). https://doi.org/10.1109/SISY.2014.6923580

Mallon, M. N. (2013) . Extending the learning process: Using the theory of connectivism to inspire student collaboration. Kansas Library Association College and University Libraries Section Proceedings, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.4148/culs.v1i0.1833

Mu, X., Dimitroff, A., Jordan, J., & Burclaff, N. (2011). A survey and empirical study of virtual reference service in academic libraries. The Journal of Aca-demic Librarianship, 37(2), 120-129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2011.02.003

Mynbayeva, A., & Anarbek. N. (2016). Informatization of education in Kazakhstan: New challenges and further development of scientific schools. Interna-tional Review of Management and Marketing, 6(S3), 259-264. Retrieved from http://www.econjournals.com/index.php/irmm/article/view/2222/pdf

Nicol, E. C., & Crook, L. (2013). Now it’s necessary: Virtual reference services at Washington State Uni-versity, Pullman. The Journal of Academic Librar-ianship, 39(2), 161-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.09.017

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Leech, N. L. (2006). Linking re-search questions to mixed methods data analysis procedures 1. The Qualitative Report, 11(3), 474-498. Retrieved from http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol11/iss3/3

Pearce, A., Collard, S., & Whatley, K. (2010). SMS reference: Myths, markers, and modalities. Refer-ence Services Review, 38(2), 250-263. https://doi.org/10.1108/00907321011045016

Quinn, A. S., Regan, J. A. R. C., & Schoech, D. (2008).

Online synchronous audio and video environments for education, training, and human service deliv-ery: A review of three products. Journal of Technol-ogy in Human Services, 26(1), 89-104. https://doi.org/10.1300/J017v26n01_07

Sage Research Methods. (2018). Focus group: Methods map. Sage Research Methods. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.nu.edu.kz:2244/methods-map/fo-cus-groups

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

Susetyo-Salim, T. A., & Septiana, M. (2018). Changes in the virtual reference services at Bina Nusantara University to meet users’ information needs. In Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World (pp. 851-856). London: Taylor & Francis.

Zhao, Y. (2009). Changing of library services under e-research environment. The Elec-tronic Library, 27(2), 342-348. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470910947683

65



Citation Impact of Collaboration from Intra- and Inter-disciplinary Perspectives: A Case Study of Korea

Jae Yun Lee Department of Library and Information ScienceMyongji University, Korea E-mail: [email protected]

EunKyung Chung * Department of Library and Information ScienceEwha Womans University, Korea E-mail: [email protected]

Open Access

Accepted date: March 10, 2018Received date: January 15, 2018

*Corresponding Author: EunKyung ChungAssociate ProfessorDepartment of Library and Information ScienceEwha Womans University, KoreaE-mail: [email protected]


ⓒ Jae Yun Lee, EunKyung Chung, 2018

ABSTRACTPurpose - This research aims to examine collaboration from a disciplinary perspective in Korea. There are needs to ex-plore to what extent researchers collaborate by discipline and across discipline along with the impact of collaboration.Design/methodology/approach - In order to investigate collaboration with respect to entire discipline areas and author-declared discipline information we analyzed a national researcher information database (Korean Research-er Information) with a citation index database (Korean Citation Index) covering the entire range of discipline. This study analyzed the data sets for 10 years (2004-2013) including a total of 8 categories and 119 sub-categories of disciplines, 109,551 researchers, 650,263 articles, and 1,170,039 citations in Korea.Findings - The results demonstrate that there are different intensities of collaboration from heavy to minimal across disciplines. In examining collaboration in terms of author and discipline levels, the results show that col-laboration in author level rises, then inter-disciplinary collaboration increases accordingly, in most of the 119 dis-cipline sub-categories. A number of disciplines, however, tended to collaborate more intensely within their own rather than with other disciplines. Moreover, the impact of collaboration tended to change over time depending on the types of collaboration. Specifically, inter-disciplinary collaboration was likely to have more immediate im-pact as pioneer research, especially among more than three disciplines, whereas the impact of intra-disciplinary collaboration is higher as time passes.Originality/value - In this research, a disciplinary investigation on collaboration is conducted for the entire range of disciplines in Korea. Through analyzing distinctive author-declared discipline information from the KRI, this research ex-amines the intensities of collaboration across disciplines, collaboration in author level, and the impact of collaboration.

Keywords: Collaboration, Discipline, Intra-disciplinary, Inter-disciplinary, Korea

Research PaperJ Inf Sci Theory Pract 6(1): 65-82, 2018http://dx.doi.org/10.1633/JISTaP.2018.6.1.5eISSN : 2287-4577 pISSN : 2287-9099

66


1. INTRODUCTION

Collaboration is among the unanimously recognized phenomena in the research community. At the institu-tional and national levels, collaboration has been promot-ed to solve complicated research problems that cannot be solved by single fields or disciplines of research. Funding agencies in many countries have promoted collaborative research in order to solve complex research agendas. Co-pious research has identified the characteristics, structure, and evolution of collaboration through co-authorship using a variety of analysis methods. In characterizing col-laboration trends, positive relationships between collab-oration and productivity have been found (Landry et al., 1996; Lee & Bozeman, 2005; Mairesse & Turner, 2005). As researchers collaborate more with others, there tends to be higher research productivity. Another characterizing effort of collaboration is the relationship between collab-oration and impacts. A wide variety of studies show that more collaboration is likely to have more impact (Lariv-ière, Gingras, Sugimoto, & Tsou, 2015; Leimu & Koriche-va, 2005). More recently, collaboration has been examined from disciplinary perspectives to demonstrate the struc-tures, interactions, and evolution of certain research fields (Cronin, Shaw, & La Barre, 2003; Glänzel, 2002).

Although research on collaboration from a disci-plinary perspective has been widely pursued, these endeavors have been limited in two ways, as Nagurney and Qiang (2010) highlighted. First, primarily due to data availability, research on disciplinary collaboration used authors’ affiliations or journals’ subject categories to determine disciplines. The other limitation in most stud-ies is the scope of the data sets, which contain primarily small numbers of disciplinary areas or certain so-called inter-disciplinary fields. As a result, these studies reach similar conclusions regarding the rising trends of in-ter-disciplinary collaboration and show more impact of collaborative work in certain areas (Franceschet & Cos-

tantini, 2010; Larivière, Gingras, & Archambault, 2006).In this sense, the purpose of this study is to examine

collaboration from a disciplinary perspective in Korea. More specifically, disciplinary analyses are twofold: in-tra-disciplinary1) and inter-disciplinary. Intra-disciplinary means collaboration within the same discipline, while inter-disciplinary refers to collaboration among different disciplines. For this purpose, we utilized a unique data-set, the Korean Researcher Information (KRI).2) The KRI contains researcher information such as identification number, affiliation, degree, and research product. More importantly, the KRI maintains researcher-declared dis-cipline areas according to the Korea Research Discipline Classification Scheme (refer to Appendix) by the Korean Research Foundation (Korean Researcher Information, n.d.). The other data set for this study was the Korea Citation Index (KCI).3) For this study, we analyzed two specific data sets: (1) the data on a total of 650,263 ar-ticles, and 1,170,039 citations for the period 2004-2013 from the KCI and (2) the data on authors’ disciplines for a total of 109,551 researchers according to 8 categories and 119 sub-categories of disciplines from the KRI. In analyzing these two data sets, this study was guided by the following three research questions:

RQ1: To what extent do researchers collaborate by dis-cipline in Korea? RQ2: To what extent do researchers collaborate across disciplines in Korea? RQ3: What are the impacts of intra-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaboration in Korea?

2. RELATED STUDIES

In viewing collaboration with a disciplinary perspec-tive, we examined mainly two groups of research, char-acteristics of collaboration, and intra- and inter-disci-plinary collaboration.

1) A number of fields including medicine and health science use uni-disciplinary rather than intra- when referring to collaboration within a single discipline.

2) http://www.kri.go.kr. More explanations are in the data collection section of the research methods.

3) http://www.kci.go.kr. More explanations are in the data collection section of the research methods.


Citation Impact of Collaboration from Intra- and Inter-disciplinary Perspectives

2.1. Productivity and Impact of Collabora-tion

To understand the characteristics of collaboration in the research community, two primary clusters of studies can be categorized: collaboration and produc-tivity, and collaboration and impact. The first cluster of studies focuses on the relationship between collab-oration and productivity. Lee and Bozeman (2005) evaluated the extent to which collaboration has impact on scientific productivity. The results showed that the number of authors per article is highly correlated to productivity. Similarly, Adams et al. (2005) studied the effects of the number of collaborators in terms of domestic and foreign institutional collaboration. For the period of 19 years (1981-1999), they calculated the number of collaborations in terms of domestic and foreign institution. The findings indicate that increases in scientific productivity result from larger numerical size of collaborators. In addition, Landry et al. (1996) investigated institutional collaboration in Canada. The results showed that collaboration generally contributes to productivity to a varying range. Bordons et al. (1996) analyzed the influence of collaborations on productivity for three areas within the biomedical discipline: neuro-sciences, gastroenterology, and cardiovascular systems. The results showed that international and domestic collaborations were positively correlated with produc-tivity at the level of individual authors. Defazio, Lock-ett, and Wright (2009) investigated the relationship between collaboration and productivity in the context of EU-funded research networks. Through analyzing a total of 294 researchers in 39 EU research networks, the results showed that the impact of collaboration on productivity is positive and significant. Mairesse and Turner (2005) studied collaboration in the discipline of physics among researchers. The results demonstrated that collaboration is strongly correlated with produc-tivity in terms of correlation coefficient. The study also noted that productivity plays an important role in creating connections among researchers in different locations, which shows similar results in China (Liang & Zhu, 2002). Abramo, Angelo, and Murgia (2017) demonstrate that collaboration at internal and domes-tic levels has a positive effect on research productivity. Research endeavoring at examining the characteristics of collaboration shows that there is a positive relation-ship between collaboration and productivity. However,

a review of these studies indicates that a positive rela-tionship can be found in limited disciplinary areas such as science fields, biomedical areas, and physics.

For the second line of research in investigating the characteristics of collaboration, there have been endeavors to demonstrate the relationship between collaboration and impact. In terms of historical per-spectives, Larivière, Gingras, Sugimoto, and Tsou (2015) examined the relationship between impact and collaboration for the period 1900-2011 with a total of 32,507,682 papers and 514,870,525 citations. The results of this study showed that co-authorship, inter-institu-tional collaboration, and international collaboration in-creased in both social sciences and humanities, and in natural and medical science. Moreover, a relationship between collaboration and scientific impact was posi-tively identified in this data set. Van Raan (1998) used indicators based on citation counts to demonstrate that international collaborations have more positive effects on the quality of the output compared with research without collaboration. In the domain of university-in-dustry relationships, a study by Balconi and Laboranti (2006) focused on the discipline of microelectronics. With a combination of bibliometric data and inter-views, the study showed that the type of universi-ty-industry collaboration was strongly correlated with qualitative performance in scientific research. Hayati and Ebrahimy (2009) analyzed Iranian publications on the ISI Web of Science database to demonstrate the relationship between the number and impact of publication. The findings indicated that there is a pos-itive and meaningful correlation among the number of publications and the impact in scholarly scientific publications. In other words, the impact of publications increases as they increase in number. Leimu and Ko-richeva (2005) analyzed 837 research papers published in Oecologia for the period 1998-2000 to determine the impact of collaboration. The findings showed that articles in collaborations with multiple institutions had higher citation rates than did single-authored articles. In these studies, the research impact is commonly mea-sured by the number of citations for papers. Although these studies similarly identified positive correlations between collaboration and impact, different levels of impact are shown according to the different types of collaboration, such as international, inter-institute, and academia-industry.

68


2.2 Intra-Disciplinary and Inter-Disciplinary Collaboration

From the disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspec-tives on collaboration, there have been two primary groups of endeavors. First, research efforts have been conducted to indicate the differences and features among various individual disciplines in terms of col-laboration. Mostly, studies attempted to compare the differences with respect to collaboration activities and impact. Glänzel (2002) compared the features of collaboration trends and patterns in the biomedical, chemistry, and mathematics disciplines in terms of productivity and impact. The primary findings of that study showed that although collaboration had in-creased substantially, its impact varied widely among disciplines. Considering acknowledgement sections to indicate sub-authorship, Cronin, Shaw, and La Barre (2003) investigated collaboration activities in terms of co-authorship and sub-authorship for the 100 volumes of both Psychological Review and Mind and found dif-ferent collaboration activities. In psychology, collabo-ration had increased and was likely to be considered an acceptable practice, whereas researchers in philosophy tended to work alone rather than collaborate with oth-ers. Abramo, D’Angelo, and Di Costa (2009) analyzed a total of 78 universities’ research data on 36,000 science and technology researchers for the three-year period from 2001 to 2003 in order to indicate the impacts of collaboration in Italy. The study results found that in-terdisciplinary collaboration was correlated with higher impact in the science and technology discipline. More-over, international collaboration with interdisciplinary approaches is highly related to research impact.

The other group of studies has attempted to demon-strate the characteristics and features of interdisciplin-ary collaboration. Franceschet and Costantini (2010) comparatively analyzed the impact and quality as-sessment of cross-disciplinary publications in science, social sciences, and arts and humanities. With 20 disci-plinary areas, 102 research structures, 18,500 research products, and 6,661 peer reviews, the findings of this study indicated that collaboration intensity substan-tially varied across disciplines. In addition, the results highlighted a generally positive association between number of authors on a paper and citation count. The correlation was stronger when collaboration was het-erogeneous, that is, among authors from different in-

stitutions. Larivière, Gingras, and Archambault (2006) analyzed the data of the Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, and the Arts & Humanities Ci-tation Index during the period 1980-2002 to compare the natural sciences and engineering, social sciences, and the humanities in terms of collaboration patterns. The findings largely confirmed that nearly all publica-tions in natural sciences were multi-authored but the collaboration rate in humanities was less than 10%. However, the study did note that collaboration patterns in the social sciences were more similar to those of re-searchers in the natural sciences and engineering than of those in humanities. Van Rijnsoever and Hessels (2011) investigated the characteristics of intra- and inter- disciplinary collaboration. The results showed that gender and work experience are related to in-tra-disciplinary collaboration, while intra-disciplinary collaborations are more likely to occur in fundamental domains, rather than strategic disciplines.

As discussed in these related studies, research on col-laboration has attempted to identify the characteristics of collaboration and has examined its features in either individual or small sets of disciplines, or from inter-dis-ciplinary perspectives. In particular, investigations on inter-disciplinary collaboration have been restricted to certain disciplines and author affiliation information, mostly due to limited data availability. In this current study, we utilized the KRI database for authors’ disci-pline information along with the data on the articles and citations to overcome constraints in investigating collaboration from intra- and inter-disciplinary per-spectives.

3. RESEARCH METHODS

3.1. Data CollectionFor this study, two data sets were collected. One was

the articles and citations from the Korean Citation Index database for the period of 2004-2013 for arti-cles and citations. The data comprised a total of 2,172 journal titles, 650,263 articles, and 1,170,039 citations as of December 2013. For the articles, the maximum number of citations was 241, and the average number was 1.799. The other data set was researcher discipline information, for which we used the Korean Researcher Information database managed by the National Re-



search Foundation of Korea. The KRI database was launched in 2008 to share information on research products by researchers who are affiliated with univer-sities and research institutes. For evaluation purposes in Korea, individual professors and researchers hired at universities and research institutes must enter the in-formation regarding their disciplines according to the discipline classification scheme shown in the Appen-dix. The database contains 8 discipline categories: hu-manities, social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, medicine and pharmacy, agriculture and fisheries, arts and kinesiology, and multidisciplinary studies; there are a total of 119 sub-categories. Engineering contains 28 sub-categories, whereas medicine and pharmacy has only 6. Humanities also has a large number of sub-cat-egories, 23, the social sciences have 22, and natural science contains 13. Agriculture and fisheries contains 7 sub-categories, and arts and kinesiology has 12. For multidisciplinary studies, there are 8 sub-categories of discipline. This study analyzed a total of 109,551 researchers, 650,263 articles, and 1,170,039 citations among the categories and sub-categories.

3.2. Data AnalysisWe analyzed two sets of data to identify the extent of

collaboration by discipline, inter-disciplinary collabo-ration, and impacts of collaboration with a disciplinary perspective.

First, in order to demonstrate to what extent re-searchers collaborated by discipline, we calculated a collaboration coefficient (CC) for individual research-ers. Initially, CC was introduced and used to indicate how much researchers, journals, and research teams collaborated using the average number of co-authors on an article (Ajiferuke, Burrel, & Tague, 1988). For the current study, we used author-level CC, which we called the author-level collaboration coefficient (ACC) as shown in (1) to demonstrate individual researchers’ collaboration tendencies.

(1)

i: ith article,ai: the number of author(s) in ith article,N: the total number of articles published by an author

To compare the collaboration activities by discipline, we calculated the average ACC for each of the 8 cate-gories and then among the 119 sub-categories. As Ajif-eruke, Burrel, and Tague (1988) observed, ACC tends to approach zero as single-authored articles dominate and to approach 1 as articles co-authored by research-ers from different disciplines dominate.

Second, in order to indicate to what extent research-ers collaborated across disciplines, we calculated the discipline-level CC (DCC) as shown in (2). The for-mula is the same as that for ACC, but M represents the total number of articles published in a discipline rather than authors.

(2)

i: ith article,ai: the number of author(s) in ith article,M: the total number of articles published in a discipline

As with the ACC, the DCC is likely to approach 0 as single-discipline articles predominate and to approach 1 when multi-discipline articles are more common. We should note that with articles by co-authors from dif-ferent disciplines, the articles are listed in each author’s discipline. For instance, an article with three authors from three different sub-categories will be listed as be-longing to each of the three sub-categories. Generally speaking, the DCC tends to be lower than the ACC because the DCC takes into account only articles with different disciplines involved. In addition, to visualize the distribution of disciplinary differences R, a statis-tical computing tool (R Core Team 2014), was used. Microsoft Excel was used for collaboration coefficient scatterplot.

Third, to demonstrate the impacts of both intra- and inter-disciplinary collaboration, we calculated the citation counts by discipline. For comparison, we used field-normalized citation scores (Rehn, Wadskog, Gornitzki, & Larsson, 2014) to identify citation impact by discipline and year of publication. Calculating this citation score required two steps: counting the num-ber of citations of each article and (2) calculating the discipline reference value, which is the average citation count for each discipline and each year. Then, to an-

70


alyze intra-disciplinary collaboration, we normalized the citation counts of all articles by dividing them by their corresponding discipline reference values. To an-alyze inter-disciplinary collaboration, we normalized the citation counts of all articles by dividing them by the average discipline reference values for all disciplines represented in an article.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1. Collaboration by DisciplineIn order to understand the collaboration propensity

by discipline, author-level collaboration coefficients were calculated and averaged by discipline. Figure 1 shows the distribution of authors by ACC value. Over-all, there were distinctive differences among 8 disci-pline categories. Humanities, the social sciences, arts and kinesiology, and multidisciplinary studies showed high rates of ACCs of 0; that is, substantial numbers

of authors in these disciplines do not collaborate with others. Humanities showed an extremely high frequen-cy of authors with no collaboration; social sciences, arts and kinesiology, and multidisciplinary studies showed relatively high frequencies of ACCs of 0.5. By contrast, the natural sciences, engineering, medicine and pharmacy, and agriculture and fisheries tended to collaborate considerably. Among these four categories, the natural sciences and engineering showed a relative-ly high number of authors with no collaboration com-pared with medicine and pharmacy and fisheries.

Table 1 shows the ACC scores for each discipline, and Figure 1 shows that two groups of disciplines can be distinguished. The humanities, social sciences, arts and kinesiology, and multidisciplinary studies showed low mean values, less than 0.4. In addition, the humanities showed extremely low means and a median of 0 because most humanities authors do not collaborate with others.

In detail, the average ACC was calculated for a total of 119 disciplines as shown in Figure 2. We should note

Fig. 1 ACC histograms for the 8 discipline categories



that two sub-categories, Western classical language and literature and lexicography, are not included in Figure 2 because there were fewer than 10 authors in each of the two disciplines, which could have led to misleading inter-pretations of the full graph. As shown in Figure 2, the av-erage sub-category ACCs showed similar patterns within their larger disciplines. For instance, all 23 humanities sub-categories showed average ACCs of less than 0.25. In contrast, all six sub-categories of medicine and phar-

macy showed high ACCS of over 0.60; the highest was for veterinary. In addition, the average ACCs varied by discipline category. For instance, in the humanities and engineering, the average ACCs followed a narrow range of 0.25, whereas the averages for arts and kinesiology and multidisciplinary studies varied along a wider range.

Based on the average ACCs, the 10 highest and lowest sub-categories are shown in Table 2 and Table 3. In the high-ACC group, the average value exceeded 0.73 and

Table 1. ACC Scores for Each Discipline

Discipline Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max

Humanities 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.068 0.056 0.944

Social sciences 0.000 0.100 0.385 0.344 0.542 0.977

Arts and kinesiology 0.000 0.067 0.433 0.368 0.580 0.933

Multidisciplinary studies 0.000 0.111 0.443 0.394 0.628 0.928

Natural science 0.000 0.552 0.711 0.653 0.802 0.972

Engineering 0.000 0.556 0.667 0.630 0.750 0.952

Agriculture and fisheries 0.000 0.667 0.764 0.720 0.824 0.948

Medicine and pharmacy 0.000 0.710 0.798 0.755 0.846 0.984

72


Fig. 2 Average author-level collaboration coefficients (ACC) for discipline sub-categories



Table 2. Ten Highest Average ACCs by Discipline

Category Sub-category ACC

Medicine and pharmacy Veterinary 0.808

Agriculture and fisheries Livestock science 0.789

Medicine and pharmacy Pharmacy 0.770

Agriculture and fisheries Agriculture 0.757

Medicine and pharmacy Medicine 0.755

Engineering Ergonomics 0.755

Medicine and pharmacy Other medicine and pharmacy 0.751

Natural science Biology 0.750

Engineering Biomedical engineering 0.742

Medicine and pharmacy Korean medicine 0.737

Table 3. Ten Lowest Average ACCs by Discipline

Category Sub-category ACC

Humanities Confucian studies 0.021

Humanities Buddhist studies 0.022

Humanities Catholic theology 0.033

Humanities Christian theology 0.034

Humanities Literature 0.044

Humanities Philosophy 0.049

Humanities History 0.051

Humanities Religious studies 0.053

Humanities Korean language and literature 0.060

Humanities German language and literature 0.060

74


the highest individual ACC was 0.808. The disciplines in this group were mostly in medicine and pharmacy (veterinary, pharmacy, medicine, other medicine and pharmacy, and Korean medicine). In contrast, the sub-categories with the 10 lowest average ACCs were all in the humanities, and all values were extremely low, less than 0.060.

In calculating the ACCs for the 8 main discipline categories and 119 sub-categories, we established that different disciplines showed dissimilar intensities of col-laboration. This result largely confirms the finding that collaboration varies by discipline from previous studies such as Franceschet and Costantini (2010), and Lariv-

ière, Gingras, and Archambault (2006). In particular, collaboration in the humanities is rare, whereas in the sciences and engineering areas, it is common. The find-ings of this current study reveal overall collaboration trends across disciplines in Korea.

4.2. Inter-Disciplinary CollaborationFigure 3 visually displays the extent of collaboration

across disciplines based on the DCCs. Although the overall DCCs were lower than the ACCs, their patterns were similar: The humanities showed extremely low DCCs whereas the natural sciences and engineering showed relatively high values.



Table 4 and Table 5 show the 10 highest and 10 lowest DCCs by category and sub-category. In contrast to the ACC results, engineering showed high inter-disciplinary collaboration across the sub-categories of ergonomics, biomedical engineering, other engineering, forestry engineering, and nuclear engineering. In addition, mul-tidisciplinary studies (specifically, brain and cognitive science) showed high inter-disciplinary. Similar to the ACC results, the humanities showed the lowest DCCs.

However, we did note that under the social sciences, law showed extremely low inter-disciplinary collaboration.

Just as the ACC reflects the extent of author-level col-laboration, the DCC reflects the extent of collaboration across disciplines. As Figure 4 demonstrates, there were a number of interesting features of inter-disciplinary collaboration depending on the discipline. Overall, the relationship between ACC and DCC showed a positive correlation (Pearson’s correlation coefficient = 0.829);

Fig. 3 Discipline-level collaboration coefficients (DCC) by discipline sub-category

76


as the ACC increased, the DCC increased as well. Some disciplines—brain science, ergonomics, biomedical engineering, forestry engineering, and nuclear engi-neering—showed substantial collaboration both among authors and among disciplines. Researchers in these ar-

eas collaborated highly with researchers from different disciplines. In contrast, other disciplines showed high collaboration among authors in the same discipline but not across disciplines. For instance, veterinary, livestock science, agriculture, and Korean medicine showed high

Table 4. Ten Highest DCCs by Discipline

Category Sub-category DCC

Medicine and pharmacy Other medicine and pharmacy 0.510

Engineering Ergonomics 0.411

Natural science Other natural science 0.409

Multidisciplinary studies Brain science 0.406

Engineering Biomedical engineering 0.397

Engineering Other engineering 0.389

Engineering Forestry engineering 0.383

Multidisciplinary studies Cognitive science 0.382

Engineering Nuclear engineering 0.378

Natural science Earth science 0.356

Table 5. Ten Lowest DCCs by Discipline

Category Sub-category DCC

Humanities Other Western languages and literature 0.010

Humanities Christian theology 0.015

Humanities Buddhist studies 0.015

Humanities Japanese language and literature 0.017

Humanities Confucian studies 0.019

Social sciences Law 0.020

Humanities Catholic theology 0.022

Humanities History 0.022

Humanities Russian language and literature 0.024

Humanities Chinese language and literature 0.024



average ACCs but the collaborations were primarily in-tra-disciplinary. Architectural engineering, kinesiology, accounting, civil engineering, tourism, journalism and broadcasting, and nursing science are displayed in the lower right in Figure 4, and they showed a similar pat-tern: Authors collaborated considerably, but within rath-er than across disciplines. In viewing collaboration with an inter-disciplinary perspective, we identified distinct discipline sub-categories with high intra-disciplinary

but relatively low inter-disciplinary collaboration.

4.3. Impact of CollaborationTable 6 shows the impacts of collaboration by type

based on citation scores. The average score of intra-dis-ciplinary collaboration was slightly lower than the scores for collaboration between two disciplines and among three or more disciplines. Overall, the impact of inter-disciplinary collaboration is slightly greater than

Fig. 4 Average ACCs and DCCs for each discipline sub-category

Table 6. Average Impact Scores in Terms of Intra- And Inter-Disciplinary Collaboration

Type Avg. of impact score

Intra-disciplinary collaboration 0.975

Inter-disciplinary collaboration (between two disciplines) 0.996

Inter-disciplinary collaboration (among three or more disciplines) 0.983

78


that of intra-disciplinary collaboration.Figure 5 visually presents the impact of collaboration

by the three types listed. Inter-disciplinary collaboration showed more immediate impact, whereas intra-dis-ciplinary showed long-term impact. As we can see in Figure 5, articles that were published in 2004, 2005, and 2006 showed substantially higher inter-disciplinary collaboration among three or more disciplines. By con-trast, in more recently published articles, we found the opposite trend. Both types of inter-disciplinary collabo-ration showed higher impact compared with that within disciplines. This result indicates that inter-disciplinary collaboration tends to result in pioneering research rather than having long-term impacts. Jacobs (2003) discussed the Nobel laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman. A number of important articles co-authored by Kahneman and economist Richard Thaler were pub-lished, but they had more immediate impact rather than enduring influence. Kahneman’s most cited articles are primarily within his own discipline, psychology. In fact, his 10 most cited articles have no inter-disciplinary col-

laboration. The studies that examine the relationship between

collaboration and impact primarily demonstrate a pos-itive correlation between the two (Larivière, Gingras, Sugimoto, & Tsou, 2015; Van Raan, 1998; Balconi & Laboranti, 2006). That is, as collaboration increases, the impact of collaborative works increases as well, and these results have come from a wide variety of disci-plines such as the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, medical science, and microelectronics. How-ever, there have also been mixed findings regarding the positive relationship between collaboration and impact. For instance, Hart (2007) and Medoff (2003) found no evidence that collaboration led to greater impact. As we identify in this study, the impact of collaboration might be affected by time and discipline, and we also demon-strated that article impact varied depending on type of collaboration. In this sense, the findings of this current study may provide a plausible explanation for the pre-vious mixed results. That is, type of collaboration might differently affect the impacts of research over time.

Fig. 5 Citation impact with respect to intra- and inter-disciplinary collaboration over time



5. CONCLUSION

Despite the fact that collaboration is on the rise as a research topic, our understandings on collaboration have been limited by disciplinary fields or restricted data. As previous studies have indicated, investigations on collaboration have been conducted by utilizing author affiliations or journal subject categories in cer-tain disciplinary areas, not covering the entire set of disciplines. As a way to better understand collaboration both within and across disciplines, we analyzed the KCI and KRI data sets with a total of 8 categories and 119 sub-categories of disciplines, 109,551 researchers, 650,263 articles, and 1,170,039 citations. By calculating collaboration coefficients at the author and discipline levels and also field-normalized citation scores, we in-vestigated the trends and impacts with respect to intra- and inter-disciplinary collaboration.

As collaboration has become significant in a wide variety of research communities, interdisciplinary collaboration has been encouraged in a considerable number of funding agencies among many countries, including Korea. Within the context of interdisciplin-ary collaboration emphasis, the findings of this study imply that inter-disciplinary collaboration needs to be understood cautiously depending on disciplinary research topics or research phases. As previous studies indicated (Franceschet & Costantini, 2010; Larivière, Gingras, & Archambault, 2006), inter-disciplinary collaboration is positive overall. The findings of this study, however, demonstrated that impacts of interdis-ciplinary collaboration are likely to be dynamic. That is, inter-disciplinary collaboration showed relatively high-er impact in an early phase of research, but impacts of intra-collaboration were found to stay strong over later phases of research. It seems that inter-disciplinary col-laborative research is supposed to disseminate new top-ics or methodologies to other disciplines and the im-pact of it is likely to be short-term. On the other hand, intra-disciplinary collaboration tends to accommodate and deepen the adopted topics and methodologies and clearly its impact stays longer than inter-disciplinary collaboration does. This result can imply that research policies to promote collaboration should consider the dynamic characteristics of collaboration impacts on collaboration types.

In this line of research, characteristics and impacts of

collaboration need to be explored further. Future stud-ies on collaboration could be twofold: collaboration in terms of intra- vs. inter- disciplinary approaches, and the impact of collaboration over time. As this current study shows, there are found to be different charac-teristics of collaboration depending on disciplinary areas. On the other hand, the impact of collaboration needs to be understood from disciplinary perspectives. More importantly, the impact of collaboration could be intertwined in a wide variety of disciplinary areas as time goes by. Visualizing collaboration networks might shed light on the distinguishing features of individual disciplines regarding intra- versus inter-disciplinary activities. Moreover, longitudinal observations on col-laboration activities across disciplines might indicate the variations in collaboration impacts over time. In addition, conducting this kind of study in other coun-tries could be desirable with respect to comparing the differences and similarities of collaboration in diverse countries. When repeating similar studies, discipline information for researchers needs to be cautiously col-lected since the way to define the researcher’s discipline is crucial for comparison analysis.

REFERENCES

Abramo, G., D’Angelo, C. A., & Di Costa, F. (2009). Research collaboration and productivity: Is there correlation? Higher Education, 57, 155- 171.

Abramo, G., D’Angelo, C. A., & Murgia, G. (2017). The relationship among research productivity, research collaboration, and their determinants. Journal of Informetrics, 11(4), 1016-1030.

Adams, S. J. D., Black, G. C., Clemmons, J. R., Paula, E., & Stephan, P. E. (2005). Scientific teams and insti-tutional collaborations: Evidence from U.S. univer-sities, 1981-1999. Research Policy, 34(3), 259-285.

Ajiferuke, I., Burrel, Q., & Tague, J. (1988). Collabora-tive coefficient: A single measure of the degree of collaboration in research. Scientometrics, 14, 421-433.

Balconi, M., & Laboranti, A. (2006). University-indus-try interactions in applied research: The case of microelectronics. Research Policy, 35, 1616-1630.

Bordons, M., Gomez, I., Fernandez, M. T., Zulueta, M. A., & Mendez, A. (1996). Local, domestic and

80


international scientific collaboration in biomedical research. Scientometrics, 37(2), 279-295.

Cronin, B., Shaw, D., & Barre, K. L. (2003). A cast of thousands: Coauthorship and subauthorship col-laboration in the 20th century as manifested in the scholarly journal literature of psychology and philosophy. Journal of the American Society for In-formation Science and Technology, 54(9), 855-871.

Defazio, D., Lockett, A., & Wright, M. (2009). Funding incentives, collaborative dynamics and scientific productivity: Evidence from the EU framework program. Research Policy, 38(2), 293-305.

Rehn, C., Wadskog, D., Gornitzki, C., & Larsson, A. (2014). Bibliometric indicators: Definitions and us-age at Karolinska Institutet. Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet. Retrieved from http://kib.ki.se/sites/default/files/bildarkiv/Dokument/bibliometric_indicators_2014.pdf p.8

Franceschet, M. & Costantini, A. (2010). The effect of scholar collaboration on impact and quality of academic papers. Journal of Informetrics, 4(4), 540-553.

Glänzel, W. (2002). Coauthorship patterns and trends in the sciences (1980-1998): A bibliometric study with implications for database indexing and search strategies. Library Trends, 50(3), 461-473.

Hart, R. L. (2007). Collaboration and article quality in the literature of academic librarianship. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33(2), 190-195.

Hayati, Z., & Ebrahimy, S. (2009). Correlation between quality and quantity in scientific production: A case study of Iranian organizations from 1997 to 2006. Scientometrics, 80(3), 625-636.

Jacobs, J. A. (2013). Disciplines and interdisciplinarity in research universities. Presentation at the Nation-al Research Council Meetings on Team Science, October 24, 2013 (p. 3). Retrieved from http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/docu-ments/webpage/dbasse_085386.pdf

Korean Researcher Information. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.kri.go.kr/

Landry, R., Traore, N., & Godin, B. (1996). An econo-metric analysis of the effect of collaboration on academic research productivity. Higher Education, 32(3), 283-301.

Larivière, V., Gingras, Y., & Archambault, É. (2006). Canadian collaboration networks: A comparative

analysis of the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. Scientometrics, 68(3), 519-533.

Larivière, V., Gingras, Y., Sugimoto, C. R., & Tsou, A. (2015). Team size matters: Collaboration and sci-entific impact since 1900. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(7), 1323-1332.

Lee, S., & Bozeman, B. (2005). The impact of research collaboration on scientific productivity. Social Studies of Science, 35(5), 673-702.

Leimu, R., & Koricheva, J. (2005). Does scientific col-laboration increase the impact of ecological arti-cles? BioScience, 55(5), 438-443.

Liang, L., & Zhu, L. (2002). Major factors affecting Chi-na’s inter-regional research collaboration: Regional scientific productivity and geographical proximity. Scientometrics, 55(2), 287-316.

Lutz, M. A. (1999). Economics for the common good: Two centuries of economic thought in the humanist tradition (p. 219). London and New York: Rout-ledge.

Mairesse, J., & Turner, L. (2005). Measurement and ex-planation of the intensity of co-publication in sci-entific research: An analysis at the laboratory level. Nber Working Paper Series, w11172.

Medoff, M. (2003). Collaboration and the quality of economics research. Labour Economics, 10(5), 597-608.

Nagurney, A., & Qiang, Q. (2010). A knowledge col-laboration network model across disciplines. Pro-ceedings of the Third International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling, and Pre-diction (SBP 2010) (pp. 138-148), Bethesda, MD, USA, March 30-31, 2010.

R Core Team. (2014). R: A language and environment for statistical computing (version 3.1.2). Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from. https://www.r-project.org/

Van Raan, A. F. J. (1998). The influence of international collaboration of the impact of the research results. Scientometrics, 42(3), 423-428.

Van Rijnsoever, F. J., & Hessels, L. K. (2011). Factors associated with disciplinary and interdisciplinary research collaboration. Research policy, 40(3), 463-472.



Appendix Research Discipline Classification in the Korean Researcher Information Database

Category Sub-category

Engineering

Engineering in general

Mechanical engineering

Automotive engineering

Aerospace engineering

Chemical engineering

Polymer engineering

Ergonomics

Control and instrumentation engineering

Electrical engineering

Material science and engineering

Environment engineering

Electronic / Communications engineering

Computer science

Civil engineering

Architectural engineering

Industrial engineering

Safety engineering

Nuclear engineering

Marine engineering

Ocean engineering

Fiber engineering

Resources engineering

Metallurgical engineering

Traffic engineering

Biomedical engineering

Agriculture engineering

Forestry engineering

Other engineering


Humanities

Lexicography

History

Philosophy

Religious studies

Christian theology

Catholic theology

Confucian studies

Buddhist studies

Linguistics

Literature

Korean language and literature

Chinese language and literature

Japanese language and literature

Other oriental languages and literature

English language and literature

French language and literature

German language and literature

Spanish language and literature

Russian language and literature

Western classical languages and literature

Other western languages and literature

Interpretation and translation studies

Other humanities

82



Social sciences

Social sciences in general

Political and diplomatic science

Economics

Agricultural economics

Business management

Accounting

International trade

Sociology

Social welfare

Area studies

Anthropology

Education

Law

Public policy

Policy studies

Geography

International/Regional development

Tourism

Journalism and broadcasting

Military science

Psychological science

Other social sciences

Natural science

Natural science general

Mathematics

Statistics

Physics

Astronomy

Chemistry

Biology

Earth science

Geology

Atmospheric sciences

Oceanography

Life sciences

Other natural science


Medicine and pharmacy

Medicine

Veterinary

Nursing science

Korean medicine

Pharmacy

Other medicine and pharmacy

Agriculture and fisheries

Agriculture

Forestry

Landscape architecture

Livestock science

Fishery science

Marine transportation studies

Food science

Arts and kinesiology

Arts in general

Musicology

Art

Design

Costumes

Photography

Beauty

Theater

Film

Kinesiology

Dance

Other arts and kinesiology

Multidisci-plinary studies

Science and technology studies

Technology policy

Library and information science

Gender studies

Cognitive science

Brain science

Affective science

Other multidisciplinary studies