Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• farzaneh ghanadinezhad ¹
• Farideh Osareh ²
• Mohammadreza Ghane ³

¹ Ph.D.Student in Knowledge and Information Science . Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

² Professor, Department of Information Science and Epistemology, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

³ Associate Professor, Regional Information Center for Science and Technology, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

Introduction
One of the important aspects of scientific research that can provide the basis for scientific growth and development is their thematic content. Considering the importance of paying attention to the experiences of advanced countries in problem-finding and selecting research subjects, the present research aims to compare and analyze the subject trends of library and information science research at the national and international level.

Literature Review
A review of various studies shows that few studies have been conducted with the approach of comparing the subject trends of library and information science researches at the national level with the researches conducted in advanced countries. China (Rochester & Vakkari, 1998) and India (Dora & Kumar, 2019) were among the countries that compared national and international researches. The results showed that the research topics of this field in more advanced countries were strongly influenced by the educational, research and social structure of those countries and were very different from the research topics conducted in India. The only comparative study conducted in Iran in the field of librarianship and information science was related to (2000) Usefi, which examined the studies of more than 25 years during a limited period (two years).

Methodology
The present study is of applied type and has been done with a comparative approach between the fields of national and international research. The study population includes 84875 articles indexed in Clarity Analytics database during the years 1945-2019 and 4664 Iranian articles indexed in the ISC database during the years 1972-2019 in the library and information science. The source and tool for extracting research data to review international research topics was the Clarivate Analytics database and the ISC database to review Iranian research topics. In this study, in order to develop a thematic classification plan of articles, the method of reviewing resources and to assign articles to each of the thematic categories, the method of Automatic classification, which is one of the applications of textual analysis, was used. Data analysis was performed by calculating the frequency percentage and Chi-square test and using SPSS 22 software.

Results
The findings showed that there is a significant difference between the number of research areas of library and information science at the national and international level. Fields such as information technology, web studies, information economy, artificial intelligence, data mining, information systems, search engines, and databases were more trending among international research, and fields such as theoretical foundations, fields related to libraries and their functions, research, knowledge management, information retrieval and scientometrics were more common among Iranian researches.

Discussion
During recent decades, the world has been moving towards digital and virtual space. In this space, developments such as the increase in the volume of information and the emergence of big data on the one hand and the development of information and communication technologies and artificial intelligence tools and big data processing on the other hand, have affected the level of expectations of the people of the society from the services of libraries and the organization and accessibility of information. Has set. For this reason, librarians, information specialists and managers of libraries and information centers have taken advantage of the achievements of fields related to computer science, information technology and artificial intelligence in order to face new developments and manage large amounts of data in order to transform the traditional functions of libraries. In addition, researchers in the field of information science and epistemology, especially at the international level, are more and more interested in studying and researching in the field of data science and acquiring the most up-to-date scientific achievements and knowing the latest related tools and technologies in order to play their effective role in this space. are competitive.

Conclusion
The results of the current research show that the field of library and information science at the international level has established a stronger relationship with other fields, especially artificial intelligence, computer science, information and communication technology. Also, at the global level, digitization processes and information growth are faster and smart technologies and tools have made more progress than third world countries and especially Iran. In other words, advanced countries due to having more economic and political power, more advanced social structure, being a leader in information and communication technology developments, more financial and spiritual support from the governments and officials of these countries for researchers and providing a suitable platform for scientific studies, access Faster access to information sources, and the appropriateness of educational and research programs with the needs and expectations of society members, have a more targeted planning to identify the problem and choose a topic in line with the real problems and needs and in sync with the developments of the day, to carry out their research. Therefore, at the international level, applied topics based on web and internet developments and information and communication technologies should face more trends and a faster growth trend than Iranian research topics.
 

Keywords

• Iranian Research
• International Research
• Subject Trends
• Research Topics
• Knowledge and Information Science