Changing trends in Knowledge Management research from Library and Information Science perspective

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to explore the changing dimension of KM by comparing the nature of research carried out in KM during 1986 to 2016. Bibliometric and citation analyses methods were applied for exploring the trends in KM research in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS). Data for analysing the outcome of published literature on KM is collected from Web of Science’s Core Collection database. A total of 8,069 articles were identified and complete bibliographic and citation details of all the articles were imported to Microsoft Excel. Further, 1,696 articles were identified by refining “Information and Library Science” subject category to know the research trends specifically in the field of LIS. Then, 500 highly cited articles from ‘Information and Library Science’ subject category were selected for analysing the changing and emerging trends of KM in LIS. Authorship, keywords, references, page count, publication outlets and other contents of the selected articles were analysed to explore whether they have any relation with the number of citations. Findings revealed that the most cited articles are from United States and England. We also found a positive relationship between the number of publications, keywords and pages and the number of citations that they have received but there is no such relationship found between the references and the authors on citations. The Journal of Knowledge Management has the largest share in publishing the most cited articles in this field.