Korea's STEM Research Analysis Based on Publications in the Web of Science, 1968-2012

Kim, Byungkyu,So, Minho,Choi, Seon-Heui Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2014 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.2 No.1

Korean researchers' scientific outputs are increasing rapidly with the growth of both Korea's economy and industry size. This is the time to analyze the scientific output (STEM area) of Korea over the last 40 years. For this analysis, this study used the SCIE database of Web of Science (WoS), which is a representative global Citation Index Service. The objects of analysis are every Korean document published in the SCIE journal, and the research scopes are (1) analysis of citation and subject categories and (2) analysis of co-authorship. Through this study, characteristics such as cited trend and research trend by subject, and the status of collaboration between Korea and other countries including the 50 states of the USA were revealed.

Estimating the Impacts of Investment in a National Open Repository on Funded Research Output in South Korea

Hwang, Hyekyoung,Seo, Tae-Sul,Han, Yong-Hee,Ko, Sung-Seok Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2019 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.7 No.1

Open access is a paradigm whereby the electronic versions of scholarly publications are made freely accessible without any restrictions. It is actively promoted globally and is also promoted domestically in accordance with this global trend. However, there is a growing need to evaluate existing activities and to seek policies for the steady spread of open access. This study examines the necessity of switching to a national repository from existing institutional repositories through policy direction analysis of open repositories. We examined domestic open access policies by analysing various overseas cases and the situation in South Korea. Finally, we determined the validity of investment in a national repository by analysing its social and economic impacts using the modified Solow-Swan model. The main parameters for applying the modified Solow-Swan model were estimated, and the domestic research and development expenditure was predicted via a regression method. Then, we applied a range of rate of returns to research and development (10% to 50%) to various scenarios and examined the effects of increasing accessibility and efficiency by 1% to 10%. We found that the implementation of a national open access repository in South Korea would have a substantial impact (to the tune of 147 billion won), without considering the potential costs of such a repository. Based on the estimates of the social and economic impact of a national repository, the implementation of a national open access repository in South Korea is economically viable. Besides having beneficial social and economic impacts, a national repository is expected to enhance awareness of open access among Korean researchers and institutions.

The Role of People, Information, and Technology in LIS Education: Driving a Call for Action Towards the UN 2030 Agenda

Kim, Heesop,Alenzuela, Reysa C. Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2016 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.4 No.4

Around the world, public access to information plays a crucial role in improving lives and facilitating development. People, technology, and information, which also represent common themes of i-Schools, are deemed relevant in adapting to these global challenges. The main purpose of this research is to identify the orientation of curriculums in LIS Schools in South Korea toward technology, information, and people for graduate schools of library and information science. This research also correlates the directions of the schools with the UN 2030 Agenda. Using the Wilson model, this study examines the orientation of courses offered. The result of classification and content analysis revealed that courses offered are leaning towards technology and information content. Courses reviewed in the light of developing knowledge and skills of information professionals to facilitate the fulfillment of global goals can make libraries more responsive to the changing times.

Psychological Aspects of Job Satisfaction Among Library and Information Science Professionals

Pandita, Ramesh,Dominic, J. Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2018 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.6 No.4

This study assesses the psychological aspects which influence job satisfaction among library and information science professionals. The study is based on primary data collected from the library and information science professionals working in the higher education institutions of Jammu and Kashmir, India. In all 264 responses were collected, comprising 44.3% male respondents and 55.7% females. The majority, 74.2% of respondents, are under 45 years of age, while 67.4% of respondents have a master's degree in library and information science. Of the total respondents, 7.6% conceded to being incompetent, while 13.3% viewed their peers as incompetent. The majority, 25% of respondents, replied that the library profession is a thankless job and 70.8% of respondents viewed that they are emotionally attached to their profession, while at the gender level, compared to 75.5% females, 65% of male respondents admitted to being emotionally attached to their profession. The encouraging part is that 26.5% of respondents replied that they love doing their job beyond office hours and 75.8% of respondents replied that they would not seek voluntary retirement, while 41.7% of respondents showed willingness to continue working as library and information science professionals postretirement, if engaged.

A Comparative Analysis of Editorial Leaders' Profiles of Major and Non-Western Library and Information Science Journals

Oh, Dong-Geun,Kim, Eungi,Yeo, Jisuk,Yang, Kiduk,Lee, Jongwook Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2019 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.7 No.4

Due to the competitive nature of journal publishing, editorial leadership has become an increasingly important issue on many editorial teams. This study aimed to compare the major and non-Western international journals in library and information science and reveal the differences between them. To conduct this study, journals indexed by Scopus and Web of Science were analyzed in terms of gender, professional position and rank, institutions, and the iSchool status of the editorial leaders' institutions. The most notable results were the following: a) As a whole, both types of journals lacked true internationalization. Editorial leaders of major journals tended to be from Western countries, whereas editorial leaders of non-Western journals tended to be from non-Western countries; b) Most non-Western journals tended to appoint editorial leaders from the same country as the publisher's country; and c) Almost all editorial leaders of non-Western journals were from various non-Western countries and tended to have lower h-index scores, and their institutions were not part of the iSchool. Future research should assess editorial leadership, compare the results of this study to other disciplines, and find effective ways to collect data on editorial leaders while minimizing ethical concerns in order to meet future research needs.

Sino-South Korean Scientific Collaboration Based On Co-Authored SCI Papers

Sun, Junwei,Jiang, Chunlin Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2014 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.2 No.1

Using statistic and bibliometric methods to characterize scientific cooperation between China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) and South Korea through their bilateral co-authored papers covered by the Science Citation Index CD-ROM, 1991-2010, in our paper we exploit the feature of their cooperation in four levels: time sequence, academic community, key fields, and institution distribution. From the time sequence we know that collaboration between China and Korea starts in 1991, reaching the first peak during 2004-2007. As for the academic community, the number of Chinese corresponding authors (2414) is slightly lower than that of Korea (2700). Regarding the 27 high yield authors, there are only 4 coming from China. Korea has a higher active level than Chinese authors. China and Korea tend to cooperate with each other on strong disciplines such as physics, chemistry, material science, engineering, mathematics, pharmaceutical, computer science and biology. Furthermore, they also attach great importance to basic research and high-tech cooperation. Besides, Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks at the top 1 among the distribution of institutions. As a majority of the collaborative institutions are universities, the participation of non-university institutions is relatively low. There are 7 Korean universities among the top ten institutions, while Yanbian University and Tsinghua University in China rank respectively as third and fourth. Seoul National University, accompanied by Korea University and Yonsei University as the three top Korean universities, is also among the top among the cooperating institutions.

Citation Laws and Quasi-Impact Factor on Innovation Studies in Korea

박정민,설성수,남수현,Park, Jun-Min,Seol, Sung-Soo,Nanm, Su-Hyeon Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2009 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.40 No.4

Existing bibliometric laws have been established on the basis of well defined science journals with a long history. However, the history of technology innovation research in Korea is young and the scope of the research is diverse compared with other fields. The main purpose of this research can be summarized as follows : Can the traditional bibliometric laws be used to explain the young and diverse data derived from technology innovation studies in Korea. Second, we want to compare the explain ability of the power law, compared with the traditional laws in the field. Third, we propose a quasi index related to the well-known impact factor to measure the contribution of a journal or a group of journals to the development of innovation research in Korea. We confirmed Lotka's and Bradford's laws which are used to measure the productivity of researchers, but we could not support the validity of Price's Square Root law as Nicholls (1998) could not. On the citations to journals, Garfield's laws is not observed. However, the power law fits well the citations to author, journal, article, and book. The estimated parameters between 1.6 and 3.5 are similar to the values in the range of 1.5 and 3 in previous studies. Finally the quasi index shows that the influence of international leading journals on innovation research in Korea is weaker than on innovation studies in the world. 계량서지학은 오랫동안 잘 정의된 과학저널의 기초 위에서 구축되었다. 그러나 한국의 기술혁신연구의 역사는 짧고 다른 분야에 비해 연구범위도 다양하다. 따라서 우리는 한국의 기술혁신연구에서도 전통적인 계량서지학의 법칙들이 적용되는지를 고찰하고자 한다. 한편 전통적인 법칙과 함께 멱함수 법칙의 설명력을 비교한다. 영향력지수와 관련하여, 한국의 기술혁신연구에 기여 정도를 측정하는 의사 영향력지수를 제안한다. 연구자의 생산성을 측정하기 위해 사용되는Lotka's law와 Bradford's law가 적용됨을 확인했으나, Nicholls(1998)와 마찬가지로 Price's Square Root law가 유효하지 않았다. 저널에 대한 인용의 측면에서는Garfield의 법칙 역시 적절하지 않았다. 다만 멱함수 법칙은 저자, 저널, 논문 및 단행본 모두에서 잘 적용됨을 확인하였다. 이전 연구에서 추정된1.5에서3사이의 범주와 유사하게 한국의 기술혁신연구에서도 1.6에서 3.5사이의 수치가 추정된 것이다. 의사 영향력지수(quasi-impact factor)를 본 연구에 적용한 결과, 피인용도가 높은 저널 집단의 한국기술혁신연구에 대한 영향력은 국제적 기술혁신연구에 비하여 그 정도가 약한 것으로 나타났다.

KCI vs. WoS: Comparative Analysis of Korean and International Journal Publications in Library and Information Science

Yang, Kiduk,Lee, Hyekyung,Kim, Seonwook,Lee, Jongwook,Oh, Dong-Geun Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2021 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.9 No.3

The study analyzed bibliometric data of papers published in Korea Citation Index (KCI) and Web of Science (WoS) journals from 2002 to 2021. After examining size differences of KCI and WoS domains in the number of authors, institutions, and journals to put publication and citations counts in perspective, the study investigated co-authorship patterns over time to compare collaboration trends of Korean and international scholars and analyzed the data at author, institution, and journal levels to explore how the influences of authors, institutions, and journals on research output differ across domains. The study also conducted frequency-based analysis of keywords to identify key topics and visualized keyword clusters to examine topic trends. The result showed Korean LIS authors to be twice as productive as international authors but much less impactful and Korean institutions to be at comparable levels of productivity and impact in contrast to much of productivity and impact concentrated in top international institutions. Citations to journals exhibited initially increasing pattern followed by a decreasing trend though WoS journals showed far more variance than KCI journals. Co-authorship trends were much more pronounced among international publication, where larger collaboration groups suggested multi-disciplinary and complex nature of international LIS research. Keyword analysis found continuing diversification of topics in international research compared to relatively static topic trend in Korea. Keyword visualization showed WoS keyword clusters to be much denser and diverse than KCI clusters. In addition, key keyword clusters of WoS were quite different from each other unlike KCI clusters which were similar.

ISRI - Information Systems Research Constructs and Indicators: A Web Tool for Information Systems Researchers

Varajao, Joao,Trigo, Antonio,Silva, Tiago Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2021 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.9 No.1

This paper presents the ISRI (Information Systems Research Indicators) Web tool, publicly and freely available at isri.sciencesphere.org. Targeting Information Systems (IS) researchers, it compiles and organizes IS adoption and use theories/models, constructs, and indicators (measuring variables) available in the scientific literature. Aiming to support the IS theory development process, the purpose of ISRI is to gather and systematize information on research indicators to help researchers and practitioners' work. The tool currently covers eleven theories/models: DeLone and McLean's IS Success Model (D&M ISS); Diffusion of Innovations Theory (DOI); Motivational Model (MM); Social Cognitive Theory (SCT); Task-Technology Fit (TTF); Technology Acceptance Model (TAM); Technology-Organization-Environment Framework (TOE); Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB); Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior (DTPB); Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA); and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). It also includes currently over 400 constructs, nearly 2,500 indicators, and about 60 application contexts related to the models. For the creation of the tool's database, nearly 580 references were used.

Research Trends of 'One Belt One Road' in Korean Academic Circles

Tu, Bo,Shi, Jin,You, Nan,Tu, Huazhong Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2020 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.8 No.4

This proposed work aims to understand the Korean Academic Circle (KAC)'s research trend on the "One Belt One Road" (OBOR) by employing a quantitative analysis of the recent research articles published by the KAC. To do so, this proposed research has used the well-known network analysis software, Ucinet 6, by which the papers on related topics are collected and filtered from Korea Citation Index. To perform the analytical selection, the proposed work has chosen 'keywords' as the core research object and performed analysis from transverse to longitudinal aspects, and from holistic to individual aspects, respectively; and from this, the KAC's research trend on OBOR is derived. The present work has established that the KAC's attention is continuously increasing on OBOR and has sustainability. Centered on the OBOR, Korean researchers have spread their studies in various dimensions ranging from the issues like China's political economy to Sino-Korea economic and trade exchanges, and so on. The KAC has even combined OBOR with Korea's international development initiatives, which can help Korea benefit from active and sustainable cooperation with China. Moreover, the proposed work has found that Korean researchers have also actively expressed their growing attention, highlighted Korea's interest, and showed concern about China hegemony and Sinocentrism in their recent documented research works.