Mapping of topics in DESIDOC Journal of Library and Information Technology, India: a study

Abstract

This study analyzed 928 full-text research articles retrieved from DESIDOC Journal of Library and Information Technology for the period of 1981–2018 using Latent Dirichlet Allocation. The study further tagged the articles with the modeled topics. 50 core topics were identified throughout the period of 38 years whereas only 26 topics were unique in nature. Bibliometrics, ICT, information retrieval, and user studies were highly researched areas in India for the epoch. Further, Spain and Taiwan showed common research trends and areas as India whereas India has quite distinct research interests from America and China. Therefore, researchers in Library and Information Science in India should pay more attention to the topics which are under-researched. Further, it was found that there were some unique sub-fields to Indian Library and Information Science research, such as open access; online exhibition; virtual libraries; multimedia libraries; open source software; library automation; and library management system. With the passage of time topics evolve over time, new topics emerge, and old ones become obsolete. Topic modeling not only helps the researcher to determine the trending themes or related fields with respect to their field of interest but also helps them to identify new concepts and fields over time.