Editorial Board of Digital Library Journals: a social network analysis approach

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Sharma, Monica | Urs, Shalini R

Affiliations: Department of Library and Information Science University of Mysore. monirsharma@yahoo.com | International School of Information Management University of Mysore. shalini@isim.ac.in

Note: [] Part of the work accepted as a poster paper at 11th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL’2008, 2–5 December , Bali, Indonesia

Abstract: We present here our findings of a study, part of larger research focusing on understanding the structure and composition of the academic community of Digital Library (DL). Using social network analysis, the present study analyses the structural features of editorial boards (EBs) of leading journals of DL. Following the premise that boundaries and directions of a field, especially an evolving one such as digital libraries is shaped by journals and their editors, we undertook a study of the editorial boards of the top 56 journals in the field of digital libraries. Techniques from social network analysis are applied to the data to reveal the structures and relationships within the EBs and journals of the DL community. The paper reveals the structure of the scientific grouping as well as the key players in the system and finds the ‘diversified convergence’ of fields. The focus is on the stars of the DL community as well as journals. We have compared the results with our previous studies carried out on different communication platforms of the DL world. Our results show that while computer science is the common thread, library and information science is the field that dominates, both in the scheme of things of top-ranking journals as well as editors.

DOI: 10.3233/WDL-120062

Journal: World Digital Libraries - An international journal, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 101-114, 2010