Visualization of Science in the Field of Social Performance of Public Libraries

Purpose: This research aimed to visualize the growth of science development, scientific production, citation frequency of documents, highly cited documents, top authors, widely published journals, and significant subject categories related to documents in the field of social performance of public libraries among the countries with the most publications. Additionally, the research aim was to prepare a cooperation map and evaluate scientific productions in this field.
Methods: According to the purpose of the research, the current research was of the scientometric and applied research kind, and in terms of data collection, it was a descriptive-analytical research type. This research implemented a quantitative approach and scientific indicators such as the centrality index, vocabulary co-occurrence analysis, and co-authorship networks. The data collected from the articles indexed in this database، after retrieving 278 records related to the research, data was analyzed based on the objectives of the research. To draw the networks and maps used in the present study، as well as data analysis، the software of HistCite، Gephi، Node XL, and VOSwiever were used.
Findings: Findings show that scientific productions and the number of citations received in this field during the years under review had generally top and down. Highly cited articles were published in journals in the field of information science and librarianship between 2007 and 2016. All articles in this field were written by 640 authors. The highest collaboration was among 23 authors with at least two collaborations. The rest of the authors contributed to only one work whom their affiliation were the University of Pennsylvania. The Australian National University has the highest number of intermediate centers. The order of universities also varies according to the degree of centrality index or number of collaborations. The highest correlation between the two subjects is related to the subjects of public libraries and information services with a strength of 5. After that, the highest correlation is between the subjects of social media and public libraries with a correlation strength of 4. Social acceptance with public libraries with a correlation strength of 4 and public libraries with web 2 with a correlation strength of 4.
Conclusion: The most common collaborations in the production of works in the field of social performance of public libraries have been between the United Kingdom and the United States، China with the United States، Australia with the United States، and the United Kingdom with Scotland، respectively. The largest joint venture between the University of Ghana with Kuwait University of Science and Technology، and the University of Illinois with Drexel University، and the rest of the universities had a joint venture. The highest percentage of international collaboration belongs to Australia and the lowest percentage of international collaboration belongs to the United States. With a deeper study of the mentioned cases, one can better understand the limitations and challenges related to the social performance of public libraries in our country and try to fix or improve it. According to the obtained results, it is suggested that Iranian researchers enter more in this field and have scientific cooperation with the authors of other countries, scientific and research centers support and encourage Iranian writers to collaborate with writers from other countries. Particularly, Asian countries should cooperate to gain a greater share in scientific cooperation between countries.