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196 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

expand the core principles to the relevant and new information fields in time. Through the research
and teaching of professional problems, the professionals of the library and related departments
should be trained to promote the librarianship steadily.

A bibliometric investigation and qualitative analysis of articles in the Journal
of Library Science in China from 1998 to 2017

〇a*
Helena H. Zhang & Fred Y.Ye〇
Assessing quantity or quality of academic articles are two completely different evaluation
orientations. Obviously, quantity never represents quality and vice versa. In general, the
quantitative research aims at the groups, mainly through the bibliometric indicators, to realize
the statistical evaluation of the quantity, while the quality analysis aims at individuals, mainly
depending on peer review, to judge quality. The purpose of this paper focuses on combining
quantitative research with quality analysis to achieve a balance between them, so as to provide a
reference for comprehensive academic evaluation.
Based on the quantitative data of CNKI database and the qualitatively selected articles of the
60th anniversary anthology of Journal of Library Science in China, we define all papers, qualified
papers and double-highly selected papers between 1998 and 2017. In this paper, we adopt three
measurement indicators: citation (C), download(U) and the ratio of citation to download (K)
to carry out bibliometric research on all papers and qualified papers. Also, group analysis and
personalization analysis are used to analyze the quality of qualified papers and double-highly
selected papers.
It is found that, first of all, whether in all papers or in qualified papers, C,U and K all obey
the power law distribution, that is, there is a “Matthew effect” in the distribution of citations,
downloads and the ratio of citation to download. The average annual ratios of citation to download
decrease yearly. We investigate the influencing factors from the aspects of numerator and
denominator, i.e. citation and download, and find that the earlier papers tend to accumulate higher
citations and the recent papers tend to attract higher downloads, which leads to a decreasing trend
of the average annual ratios of citation to download.
Secondly, by studying the correlation between citation and download of all papers, qualified
papers and double-highly selected papers in segmented time, it is revealed that the time span of
the papers should be controlled properly when discussing the correlation between them, as there
is great difference of the distribution interval of citations and downloads. A smaller time span
is conducive to a more accurate conclusion. Meanwhile, in a smaller time span, there is a high
correlation between citation and download.

* Correspondence should be addressed to Fred Y. Ye, Email: yye@nju.edu.cn, ORCID: 0000-0001-9426-934X