The scientific production of Ibero-American authors on information literacy (1985–2013)

Biofuels and Nanocatalysts: Python Boosting Visualization of Similarities

Among the most relevant themes of modernity, using renewable resources to produce biofuels attracts several countries' attention, constituting a vital part of the global geopolitical chessboard since humanity's energy needs will grow faster and faster. Fortunately, advances in personal computing associated with free and open-source software production facilitate this work of prospecting and understanding complex scenarios. Thus, for the development of this work, the keywords "biofuel" and "nanocatalyst" were delivered to the Scopus database, which returned 1071 scientific articles. The titles and abstracts of these papers were saved in Research Information Systems (RIS) format and submitted to automatic analysis via the Visualization of Similarities Method implemented in VOSviewer 1.6.18 software. Then, the data extracted from the VOSviewer were processed by software written in Python, which allowed the use of the network data generated by the Visualization of Similarities Method. Thus, it was possible to establish the relationships for the pair between the nodes of all clusters classified by Link Strength Between Items or Terms (LSBI) or by year. Indeed, other associations should arouse particular interest in the readers. However, here, the option was for a numerical criterion. However, all data are freely available, and stakeholders can infer other specific connections directly. Therefore, this innovative approach allowed inferring that the most recent pairs of terms associate the need to produce biofuels from microorganisms' oils besides cerium oxide nanoparticles to improve the performance of fuel mixtures by reducing the emission of hydrocarbons (HC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx).

A bibliometric analysis of digital literacy research and emerging themes pre-during COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose

Digital literacy is not the mere ability to use a digital device or know to use various software. It is a domain of exploration for sociology, psychology, education and, of course, technology. This study aims to present a quantitative analysis of the literature on digital literacy using a bibliometric approach.

Design/methodology/approach

Using data from the Web of Science database, the importance of the research is evaluated by reviewing 2307 publications and examining the yearly publication, field category productivity, citation structure, most cited resources, documents, most-cited authors, most productive authors, and country in the field of digital literacy. Further, a cluster analysis is conducted to see the most recurrent keywords and emerging trends in this field. At last, the authors analyzed the thematic progression of keywords over these five years based on the normalized citations. Additionally, a graphical representation of the bibliometric data using VOSviewer is presented in the paper.

Findings

The results suggest a steady rate of publication in this field, with most of the research published in education and library fields and the USA leading the country in this realm. The emerging themes in this field are ‘Fake News’, ‘Competence’, ‘Educational Technology’, ‘Health Literacy’, ‘Self-Efficacy’ and, interestingly, ‘COVID-19’. The results also revealed that COVID-19 has been examined and associated with fake news, higher education, social media and information literacy.

Originality/value

This paper provides an overall summary of the most recent research work published from 2017 to 2021 on digital literacy in the backdrop of COVID-19. The study presents the thematic progression over the years and particularly the new keywords that emerged in the limelight of the pandemic. It contributes by updating the existing body of knowledge in the field of digital literacy and presents preliminary results related to COVID-19.

Non-synchronism in theoretical research of information science

Purpose

This paper aims to reveal the global non-synchronism that exists in the theoretical research of information science (IS) by analyzing and comparing the distribution of theory use, creation and borrowing in four representative journals from the USA, the UK and China.

Design/methodology/approach

Quantitative content analysis is adopted as the research method. First, an analytical framework for non-synchronism in theoretical research of IS is constructed. Second, theories mentioned in the full texts of the research papers of four journals are extracted according to a theory dictionary made before. Third, the non-synchronism in the theoretical research of IS is analyzed.

Findings

Non-synchronism exists in many aspects of the theoretical research of IS between journals, subject areas and countries/regions. The theoretical underdevelopment still exists in some subject areas of IS. IS presents obvious interdisciplinary characteristics. The theoretical distance from IS to social sciences is shorter than that to natural sciences.

Research limitations/implications

This study investigates the theoretical research of IS from the perspective of non-synchronism theory, reveals the theoretical distance from IS to other sciences, deepens the communication between different subject and regional sub-communities of IS and provides new evidences for the necessity of developing domestic theories and theorists of IS.

Originality/value

This study introduces the theory of non-synchronism to IS research for the first time, investigates the new advances in theoretical research of IS and provides new quantitative evidences for the understanding of the interdisciplinary characteristics of IS and the necessity of better communication between sub-communities of IS.

Evolution and diffusion of information literacy topics

Investigation of the topic of information literacy and its changes can be informative for researchers and provide a better understanding of the corresponding domains. This study conducted a topic model dynamic analysis of the articles on information literacy studies in the Web of Science core collection database that were published from 2005 to 2019. The global topics and their popularities, topical similarities and correlations, along with the evolution of temporal local topics and the diffusion of subject local topics were analyzed and presented. Nine global topics differed in terms of their temporal and subject characteristics, and this study focused on ability, technology, field, people, place and application of information literacy. For the temporal local topics, crossing was the main evolutionary mechanism; hence, the core topic words were relatively stable, but few new research directions have been explored in recent years. For the subject local topics, absorbing with division and absorbing were the main mechanisms, which supported the diffusion progress of information literacy studies among subjects. However, it is necessary to promote the development of future research through the innovative development of multidisciplinary integration. Researchers and practitioners should focus on the impact of information technology, increase the breadth and depth of the research field, and develop innovative evaluation methods that are based on data to promote the comprehensive, sustainable and effective improvement in information literacy.

Distribution features and intellectual structures of digital humanities

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a retrospective bibliometric analysis of documents about digital humanities, an emerging but interdisciplinary movement. It examines the distribution of research outputs and languages, identifies the active journals and institutions, dissects the network of categories and cited references, and interprets the hot research topics.

Design/methodology/approach

The source data are derived from the Web of Science (WoS) core collection. To reveal the holistic landscape of this field, VOSviewer and CiteSpace as popular visualization tools are employed to process the bibliographic data including author, category, reference, and keyword. Furthermore, the parameter design of the visualization tools follows the general procedures and methods for bibliometric analysis.

Findings

There is an obviously rapid growth in digital humanities research. English is still the leading academic language in this field. The most influential authors all come from or have scientific relationships with Europe and North America, and two leading countries of which are the UK and USA. Digital humanities is the result of a dynamic dialogue between humanistic exploration and digital means. This research field is closely associated with history, literary and cultural heritage, and information and library science.

Research limitations/implications

This analysis relies on the metadata information extracted from the WoS database; however, some valuable literatures in the field of digital humanities may not be retrieved from the database owing to the inherent challenge of topic search. This study is also restricted by the scope of publications, the limitation regarding the source of data is that WoS database may have underrepresented publications in this domain.

Originality/value

The output of this paper could be a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners interesting in the knowledge domain of digital humanities. Moreover, the conclusions of this retrospective analysis can be deemed as the comparable foundation for future study.

75 lessons learned for enhancing information literacy programs

Purpose

The purpose of this study has the aim of expanding lessons learned that were originally detected for information literacy (INFOLIT) programs in Ibero-American universities (from Latin America, Spain and Portugal), this paper presents lessons learned for enhancing equivalent programs offered by other universities around the world.

Design/methodology/approach

As this paper is a comparative literature review, the methodology involved three stages. Initially, a documentary analysis was carried out to identify the texts published during the past five years – since 2013 – reporting a categorization of experiences and cases of international INFOLIT programs and their corresponding lessons learned. Second, we conducted a content analysis of these publications to uncover the classification, identification and frequency of the lessons learned. A third comparative step consisted of analyzing the similarities of these lessons when compared to those reported in similar research on Ibero-American universities (Uribe-Tirado, 2013).

Findings

From the 75 lessons learned from INFOLIT programs in Ibero-American universities, 65 lessons (87 per cent) were identified as also present in universities elsewhere. These similarities give an account of the possibilities for collaborative learning and benchmarking that INFOLIT programs could achieve with regard to content, pedagogy, learning objects and evaluation if there were more networking and more common participation in sharing experiences, with appropriate adaptations to contextual, technological and idiomatic variations.

Originality/value

As a comparative literature review, this paper makes a significant contribution to the international advancement of INFOLIT in higher education, as it correlates the lessons learned from INFOLIT programs in Ibero-American universities with those from other countries. This provides a global view of the lessons learned about INFOLIT, which to date have not been reported with such a wide scope and number of lessons.

Estudio métrico de ALFIN en Iberoamérica: de la bibliometría a las altmetrics

Este trabajo busca aproximarse a la identificación de la presencia, productividad e influencia de autores iberoamericanos sobre alfabetización informacional - ALFIN, y analizar el impacto y uso de sus contribuciones académicas en las plataformas sociales y científicas a través de indicadores bibliométricos y altmétricos. Partiendo de los resultados arrojados en estudios bibliométricos a nivel mundial e iberoamericano sobre ALFIN incluidos en las principales bases de datos y las publicaciones recopiladas en una wiki iberoamericana, se extraen los autores con mayor productividad (55 autores). Luego, a partir de la consulta directa a ocho plataformas científicas (Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, ORCID, IraLIS, E-LIS y EXIT), tres redes sociales (Facebook, Twitter y LinkedIn) y los datos proporcionados por un proveedor comercial (Altmetric.com), se realiza un análisis de indicadores bibliométricos y altmétricos a nivel de autores y publicaciones. Encontramos de manera general, que existe mayor presencia de autores en ResearchGate (58%), Academia.edu (51%) y Google Scholar (49%) que en Mendeley (25%) y ORCID (18%), y que la mayor influencia potencial en plataformas sociales por la cantidad de seguidores radica en Facebook ( / top 10 autores). Además, un análisis con el estadístico rho de Spearman, arroja entre algunas fuentes y plataformas, una correlación baja entre número de citas en Google Scholar y lecturas en Mendeley (r=382) y negativa baja para menciones en blogs (r=0,-237), Google+ (r=0,-214) y Twitter (r=0,-183). Finalmente, que tanto la productividad como el impacto-visibilidad se centran en unos determinados autores de ALFIN, y que, para estos autores, y, en general, para las perspectivas métricas asumidas, considerando distintos recursos de medición, existe un impacto positivo en doble vía, de lo bibliométrico a las altmétricas y viceversa.