The Sociological and Ontological Dimensions of the Knowledge Organization Domain on Google Scholar Citations

Abstract

This study aims to identify the profiles of researchers in the knowledge organization domain on Google Scholar Citations (GSC) and investigate its sociological and ontological dimensions. The sociological dimension is related to GSC users who declared research interests that fall within the scope of the knowledge organization domain. The ontological dimension is based on the study of these concepts. Domain analysis was used as a methodological framework for this study. A search was conducted on GSC using keywords in order to create a list of scholars who declared the knowledge organization domain as one of their research interests in their Google Scholar Profiles (GSPs). Next, the search for GSPs of authors who had published their papers in the Knowledge Organization journal from 2000 to 2019 was conducted. The results showed that there were 379 publicly available GSPs. Analysis of the affiliated institutions showed that the majority of them were based respectively in the USA, Brazil, and then in India. The ontological dimension of the knowledge organization domain on GSC was examined by studying keywords attached to GSPs. The most frequently used keywords were identified and using network analysis five clusters that represented the main areas of interest were extracted.