Unveiling Novelty Evolution in the field of Library and Information Science in China

The present study analyzed over 26,000 research articles published between 1991 and 2021 in twenty-one major LIS (Library and Information Science) journals, using the machine learning (ML) approach to categorize the research methods used by LIS scholars. The findings of this study are significant. Firstly, there has been a shift in the research strategy from conceptual research (e.g., "Theoretical approach") to empirical research (e.g., "Interview") in LIS investigations over the past 31 years. Secondly, the research topics explored by LIS scholars during this period have moved from system-centered issues (e.g., "Information retrieval/models and algorithms") to user-centered topics (e.g., "Information services "). Thirdly, the study revealed dynamic and revealing relationships between the 18 research topics identified in the study and the 16 research methods commonly adopted in the LIS field. These dynamic relationships can be visualized by year and longitudinally via an interactive map created in this study.

This study explores gender differences in research topic choice and methodology among collaborating scholars. Previous studies have often focused on gender differences in research topics or methods at the individual level of scholars, without considering collaborating groups, lacking depth and practical guidance. This study takes Library and Information Science (LIS) as an example, employing the Top2Vec method for topic identification and the CogFT model for research method classification. It systematically analyzes 25,204 papers published between 1990 and 2022 to investigate gender differences in the convergence of research topics and method choices among collaborating scholars in this field. The results of the study found that female scholars showed lower convergence in their research methods and topic choices compared to male scholars. This study uses a relatively systematic methodology to address the difficulty of studying gender differences in academic publishing, and is expected to serve as a reference for other disciplines and research questions. This study also emphasizes the manifestation of gender differences in collaborative research and provides insights into the convergence and diversity of research topics and methods chosen by scholars.

The composition of author teams is an important factor influencing the novelty of academic papers. However, existing studies have paid limited attention to the role of institutional composition, and most novelty measures remain at a general level, making it difficult to explain the specific sources and types of novelty in papers. Taking the field of natural language processing as an example, this study investigates the relationship between team institutional composition and the fine-grained novelty of academic papers. Author teams are classified into three types: academic institutions, industrial institutions, and mixed academic and industrial institutions. Four types of fine-grained knowledge entities are extracted from full-text papers, including methods, datasets, tools, and metrics. The novelty of papers is then measured based on entity combinations, and pairwise combinations of different entity types are further analyzed to examine their contributions to novel papers. The results show that, in the field of natural language processing, collaboration between industrial and academic institutions is more likely to produce novel papers than purely industrial collaboration. From the perspective of fine-grained knowledge entities, mixed academic and industrial teams pay more attention to the novelty of method-metric combinations, whereas industrial teams pay more attention to the novelty of method-tool combinations. This study reveals the relationship between institutional team composition and paper novelty through fine-grained novelty measurement, providing useful evidence for improving paper quality and promoting industry-academia-research collaboration.