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176 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.12, 2020

data in the process of scientific data management are also on our research schedule.

The interdisciplinary characteristics of iSchools research: From the
perspective of biblimetrics analysis
〇a*
YANG Siluo〇 & ZHANG Yiming
Interdisciplinarity is the nature of iSchools. This work depicts the interdisciplinary landscape of
iSchools from research outcomes (publication), knowledge diffusion (input: reference, output:
citation) and school level based on the WoS publications of 36 iCaucus members in iSchools from
2009 to 2018. Interdisciplinarity is measured by three indicators, namely, variety, balance, and
intensity. We found that:
1) The interdisciplinary characteristics of research outcomes are high subject variety and
high subject imbalance. Firstly, the papers published by iSchools include 227 disciplines,
covering 89.37% of the WoS subject classification; the number of disciplines involved in the
papers is generally increasing. Secondly, the publications are relatively concentrated on a few
disciplines such as library and information science and computer science. In addition, the overall
interdisciplinary intensity of research outcomes is 56.81%, which means 56.81% of publications
involved two or more disciplines, reflecting their multidisciplinary nature.
2) The interdisciplinary characteristics of knowledge diffusion are high subject variety and
relatively high subject imbalance. Firstly, knowledge input and knowledge output cover around
254 WoS subject classifications, which shows researches of iSchools are relatively open. Secondly,
according to the cumulative percentage of the disciplinary distribution, the top ten disciplines
in knowledge input and output have respectively reached 44% and 46%, indicating the relative
concentration of knowledge diffusion. In addition, the interdisciplinary intensity of knowledge
input is 54.71%, indicating that iSchools have cited many papers from other disciplines, and their
development is mainly related to the cross-border integration of multidisciplinary knowledge. The
interdisciplinary intensity of knowledge output is 55.11%, which indicates that iSchools papers
have been widely cited by papers from other disciplines, and iSchools have formed a strong
capacity to output and to infiltrate knowledge to other disciplines.
3) The interdisciplinary characteristics of iSchools members are quite different. The
interdisciplinary diversity of UC Irvine, Cornell University, and Monash University are at the
forefront, while the interdisciplinary diversity of Humboldt University of Berlin, San Jose State
University, and Renmin University of China lag behind. UC Irvine and Cornell University publish
very low percentages of papers in library and information science. According to the factor analysis
of research outcomes, knowledge input, and knowledge output, 36 colleges can be divided

* Correspondence should be addressed to YANG Siluo, Email: 58605025@qq.com, ORCID: 0000-0003-3228-1102.