Author(s)

Youlin Zhao, Yahui Liu, Xiaotao Li, Xiangming Mu, Huiping Chen

Corresponding Author

Youlin Zhao

ABSTRACT

Understanding the direction and magnitude of water related information science area is crucial in formulating research priorities and topic identification. There is no consensus on the current state of water related information science area, thus this study was conducted to elucidate the trend in the water and water resource (W&WR) publications. We conducted an in-depth analysis on the total number of publications and the total number of citations of water related information science publication in the information science & library science area from Thomson ISI database. Ways to cluster water related information science publication for the topic terminology identification was proposed. Results revealed a main research trend in water related information science publication from 1987 to September 2016 did indicate that this trend is distributed interdisciplinary. Nine topic terminology categories were clustered and 31 corresponding sub-topic terminologies reflected the focus researches in water related information science area. Results further revealed that the water related information science publication is biased towards “water resource”, “hydrology science”, “water information” and “water quality” with a few studies were published in International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Scientometrics, Library Journal and Scientist for a coverage of 70.89% in totally. The cluster identification based on present study highlights that “hydrology science” topic focused on GIS and remote sensing technology, “water information” models mainly are spatial-temporal data and environmental information, “water conservancy” topic might be tend to engineer research. Increases in the number of publication with “water rights/law” and “water crisis” are consistent with the development and utilization of water resources by humans around the world. Finally, since only the water related information science area boundary and topic cluster terminology have been investigated, thesaurus-ontology can be stressed on water related information science area to achieve a better information retrieval on computer science technologies.

KEYWORDS

Water and water resource, topic clustering, topic terminology, water related information science, interdisciplinary study, information science & library science