The Case of Cited and Uncited Publications in the field of Reference Services: A Study

Authors

Sadaf Zia, Department of Library & Information Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India.Follow
Muzamil Mushtaq, Department of Library & Information Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India.Follow

Date of this Version

2021

Comments

A study of Cited and Uncited Publications in the field of Reference Services.

Abstract

The endeavor of the present study is to identify and compare the characteristics of cited and uncited publications in the field of reference services. The phrase ‘reference service’ was searched in the document search tab of Scopus database and found 2612 results, which were limited to social science subject area and hence got 2021 results. The retrieved data was then restricted to journal source type and found 1900 results out of 2021. At last, the data was confined to library and information science journals in source titles and retrieved the actual data for the study i.e., 1861 number of articles. The data was then downloaded and finally analyzed on the basis of the year of publication, authors, subject areas, document type, source titles, affiliation, countries, funding agencies and keywords. It was revealed that most of the documents in the field of Reference services are cited and majority of the cited articles are published in the year 2001 whereas two recent consecutive years i.e., 2018 and 2017 has produced mostly uncited publications. Luo, L., from San Jose State University, U.S. was found as the most contributing author in cited publications while Berring, R.C., from University of California, U.S., Duckett, B., from Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, U.S., Needleman, M. from Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), U.S. are leading the list of contributing authors in uncited publications. The cited publications included more number of subject fields in comparison to uncited publications. Despite the differences, some similarities were found in cited and uncited publications such as the most of them are in the form of articles and they are searchable by “Reference Service” keyword. Majority of cited and uncited publications are from USA. Subsequent similarities revealed that most of the cited as well as uncited documents are non-access type, published in Reference Librarian and apart from their main subject i.e. social sciences they belong to computer science subject area.