Information science as "Little Science":The implications of a bibliometric analysis of theJournal of the American Society for Information Science

This paper considers the status of information science as science through an exploration ofone of the leading journals in the field – the Journal of the American Society for InformationScience (JASIS) from its initial publication as American Documentation (AD) in 1950 through theclosing issue of its Silver Anniversary year in December 1999. It is a bibliometric examination ofAD/JASIS articles. Based on our analysis of articles published in AD and JASIS from 1950 to1999, we find that there has been a slow but perhaps inevitable shift based first on the single nonfundedresearcher and author to a much wider research and publishing participation amongauthors, regions, corporate authors, and countries. This suggests not only cross-fertilization ofideas, but also more complex research questions. A small trend toward greater external fundingfurther reinforces this hypothesis. Information may no longer be "little" science, but it is also not"big" science.