We investigated differences between bibliographic coupling (BC) and co-citation (CC) in article pairs and their possible effects. Although several studies have investigated these methods, most have focused on the most effective method for specific applications according to clustering results. We investigated the differences between BC strength (BCS) and CC strength (CCS) of library and information science (LIS) by using articles published from 2009 to 2018 among 44 LIS journals in Journal Citation Reports. Article pairs were based on 1,446 articles from 30 journals published in 2009. BCS was measured according to common references, and CCS was measured according to CCs in the 22,577 articles published in the 44 LIS journals from 2009 to 2018. Different relationship patterns were observed between BC and CC. The authors are usually in common when an article pair has high BCS. It shows that authors’ citation preferences may affect BCS largely. Although CCS was not affected by citation preferences, CC identified considerably fewer relationships and demonstrated weaknesses in the years following publication. Additionally, sufficient time lag was necessary to reveal the CC relationships between article pairs. In LIS, the time lag to reveal the majority of CC relationships was more than 2 years.
Relation:
Journal of Library and Information Science Research 15(1), p.97-132
