Visualisiation of Scholarly Outputs on the Evidence-Based Librarianship: A Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to visualize and analyze the Scientific Collaboration networks of authors, institutions and countries, co-word analysis, and identification of subject clusters was done in the field of evidence-based librarianship. Methodology: The current research was a descriptive study, which has been conducted using scientometric and SNA approach. The population of the study was comprised of 523 publications on evidence-based librarianship indexed by the Scopus and the Web of Science during 1998 to 2017. Ravar PreMap, Netdraw, UCINet and VOSviewer software were utilized for data visualization and analysis. Results: Results of the study revealed that the UK and the United States occupied the topmost positions with regard to centrality metrics, clearly indicating their important structural role in the evidence-based librarianship research. The network of evidence based librarianship research in terms of the degree of connectedness showed low density in both authors’ co-authorship network (0.013), institutions (0.021) and the countries’ co-authorship network (0.214). Seven important clusters were identified in the evidence-based librarianship research network such as: library and information sciences, health and medical informatics, nursing and education, clinical outcome, management, evidence based medicine, store and retrival information. The occurrence of the keywords related to the medicine, nursing and health in three subject clusters reveals the influence of evidence-based librarianship in the clinical and health sections. Keywords based on evidence-based practice, evidence-based medicine, library science, systematic review, and education have the greatest frequency and co-occurrence. Conclusion: There is a necessity for further research collaboration among the scholars, institutions and countries worldwide, due to the incoherent and scattered structure of the evidence-based librarianship network. Considering further education and research in evidence-based librarianship offers explicit results and findings from this study.