Information science as Little Science:: The implications of a bibliometric analysis of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science

This paper considers the status of information science as science through an exploration of one of the leading journals in the field - the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (JASIS) from its initial publication as American Documentation (AD) in 1950 through the closing issue of its Silver Anniversary year in December 1999, It is a bibliometric examination of AD/JASIS articles. Based on our analysis of articles published in AD and JASIS from 1950 to 1999, we find that there has been a slow but perhaps inevitable shift based first on the single nonfunded researcher and author to a much wider research and publishing participation among authors, regions, corporate authors, and countries. This suggests not only cross-fertilization of ideas, but also more complex research questions. A small trend toward greater external funding further reinforces this hypothesis. Information may no longer be little science, but it is also not big science.