International collaboration in LIS: global trends and networks at the country and institution level

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the international collaboration of global library and information science (LIS), the present paper investigated the trends, networks as well as core groups of the international collaboration in LIS at the country and institution levels by combining bibliometric analysis and social network analysis. In this study, a total of 8,570 papers from 15 core journals during the period of 2000–2011 were collected. The results indicate that 66 % of papers are joint publications in global LIS. Two-country papers and two-institution papers are the two primary collaboration patterns in the international collaboration at the country and institution levels respectively. Through social network analysis, it is observed that the country collaboration network has reached a certain degree of maturity over the past 12 years in global LIS, while the international institution collaboration network has not yet matured and is made up of dozens of components. In the country collaboration network, the position of USA and UK are remarkable. Although the USA is positioned at the center of the network, institutions located in the USA are more inclined to have collaboration within domestic, suggesting institutions in the USA have a low tendency towards international collaboration. In the institution collaboration network, it is found that two groups located in the USA and Europe respectively. The results of the institution collaboration network also reveal that Katholieke Univ Leuven has not only the largest collaboration breadth, but also strong capabilities to control communication within the international institution collaboration network.