The Information Society: The Development of a Scientific Specialty

This study explains the application of three bibliometric tools for the exploration of the maturity of the information society as a field of research. The authors discovered a disparity between the realization of the information society in everyday life and the state of the research in the area which is at a fairly early stage of evolving into a mature research discipline. Preliminary analysis of the data uncovers the three disciplinary foundations as Library and Information Science, Communication, and Information systems. The Bradford distribution reveals that the core of information society journals is not yet fully established. Journal citation and self-citation patterns lend further support for this and help identify which journals are firmly part of the core and which are less so. Finally, research collaboration patterns demonstrate that this area of research is moving towards disciplinary maturity. The paper concludes with some practical and academic recommendations.