Bibliometric studies identify RSLIS research as a front runner in the LIS field

In 2014, researchers produced a map illustrating that eight RSLIS researchers were at the research front regarding information science. In 2015, RSLIS is again identified as a front runner. In a recent ranking, W.H. Walters and E.I. Wilder counted the number of publications in 31 core LIS journals in Web of Science from 2007-2012 and  the result was clear.

LIS journals include both library science and information science, encompassing multi-disciplinary research in areas such as human-computer interaction, information retrieval, scholarly communication and scientometrics. Only 53 LIS schools worldwide contributed more than 20 articles to the journals in the studied period, and RSLIS was one of them. Out of these 53 schools, RSLIS is the 6th largest contributor to core LIS journals.

The rankings are based on English language articles in Web of Science and convey only a part of research activities at RSLIS. A considerable amount of RSLIS publications are in Danish (typically book chapters, articles in national journals and library magazines etc.), and they are excluded from the study. RSLIS research activities in this area are very broad, ranging from models of public and academic libraries, literacy and virtual reading groups, organizational studies, leadership, critical theory to urban development. For these reasons it is worth focusing also on performance outside the Anglo-American space. In this context, RSLIS comes out as a fine number three, with Nanyang (Singapore) and Tampere (Finland) as number one and two.

Read more about methods of ranking and also what is excluded from ranking such as online publications and textbooks in the short article by PhD fellow Lorna Elisabeth Wildgaard.