 How important is software to library and information science research? A content analysis of full-text publicationsXuelian Pan, Erjia Yan, Ming Cui and Weina Hua Journal of Informetrics, 2019, vol. 13, issue 1, 397-406 Abstract: We investigate the contributions of scientific software to library and information science (LIS) research using a sample of 572 English language articles published in 13 journals in 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017. In particular, we examine the use and citation of software freely available for academic use in the LIS literature; we also explore the extent to which researchers follow software citation instructions provided by software developers. Twenty-seven percent of the LIS journal articles in our sample explicitly mention and use software. Yet although LIS researchers are becoming increasingly reliant on software that is freely available for academic use, many still fail to include formal citations of such software in their publications. We also find that a substantial proportion of researchers, when documenting software use, do not cite the software in the manner recommended by its developers. Keywords: Software citation; Citation analysis; Software; Bibliometrics; Scholarly communication (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:13:y:2019:i:1:p:397-406 DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2019.02.002 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Informetrics is currently edited by Leo Egghe More articles in Journal of Informetrics from Elsevier |
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