The interdisciplinarity of iSchools: An analysis and visualization of research publications

Abstract

Based on the papers published in journals indexed by SCI/SSCI between 2008 and 2012, we studied the interdisciplinarity of iSchools and visualized publication portfolios among different journals and clusters. The findings indicate that the iSchools can be seen as interdisciplinary environments from a macroscopic perspective, but each individual iSchool has its own strengths and specializations. In many cases, the ‘i’ in the individual ‘iSchool’ can only be interpreted as ‘information’ not ‘interdisciplinary’. The results also show that LIS-related journals still occupy the most important position in the research output of iSchools, although some iSchools with strong computer science background are members of this organization. This work is compared to earlier analyses and provides a different view of the state of the interdisciplinarity of iSchools.