Library and Information Science

A number of the review journals are published in library and information science, but studies on them can be rarely found out.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the characteristics of review journals in this field.

In the present study, five review journals — Advances in Librarianship, Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Library Trends, Progress in Communication Sciences, Advances in Library Administration and Organization — published in the last three years are examined in terms of the following points,

1. (1) the number of bibliographic citations or references,
2. (2) the distribution of titles cited in review articles,
3. (3) time-lag between the time when each bibliographic citation or reference was originally published and the time when the review journal citing it was published,
4. (4) the subject area covered by each review journal,
5. (5) the afilliation of the author of each review article to determine the percentages of librarians and researchers.

The results show that review articles in one volume of ARIST cite more materials, which are recently published; informal communications are sometimes cited in Library Trends; the review articles in Progress in Communication Sciences have a weak connection with the ones in library and information science; and topics in Advances in Librarianship, Library Trends and Advances in Library Administration and Organization are similar to each other.

These results may be helpful for the people who study library and information science.