Bibliometric cartography of information retrieval research by using co-word analysis

The aim of this study is to map the intellectual structure of the field of Information Retrieval (IR) during the period of 1987-1997. Co-word analysis was employed to reveal patterns and trends in the IR field by measuring the association strengths of terms representative of relevant publications or other texts produced in IR field. Data were collected from Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for the period of 1987-1997. In addition to the keywords added by the SCI and SSCI databases, other important keywords were extracted from titles and abstracts manually. These keywords were further standardized using vocabulary control tools. In order to trace the dynamic changes of the IR field, the whole 11-year period was further separated into two consecutive periods: 1987-1991 and 1992-1997. The results show that the IR field has some established research themes and it also changes rapidly to embrace new themes. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.