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Martínez-Ávila, Guimarães, Pinho, & Fox. EKO3 2015
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The representation of ethics and knowledge organization in the WOS and LISTA
databases: A bibliometric and Bardinian content analysis
Daniel Martínez-Ávila, Assistant Professor, Department of Information Science, São
Paulo State University – UNESP, Av. Higyno Muzzi Filho, 737, Marília (17525-900) –
São Paulo – Brazil. [email protected]
José Augusto Chaves Guimarães, Professor, Department of Information Science, São
Paulo State University – UNESP, Av. Higyno Muzzi Filho, 737, Marília (17525-900) –
São Paulo – Brazil. [email protected]
Fabio Assis Pinho, Associate Professor, Department of Information Science, Federal
University of Pernambuco – UFPE, Av. da Arquitetura s/n – Recife (50740-550) –
Pernambuco – Brazil. [email protected]
Melodie J. Fox, Doctoral Candidate, School of Information Studies, University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Northwest Quadrant Building B, 3rd Floor, 2025 E Newport,
Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA. [email protected]
Abstract:
Ethics in knowledge organization (KO) has become a growing concern in both practice
and research. Examples from practice can be found in the ALA’s Code of Ethics (2008),
the 2012 IFLA Code of Ethics for Librarians and other Information Workers, and in
archival codes of ethics and principles from around the world (Rego et al. 2014). The two
conferences and proceedings on ethics in knowledge organization from 2009 and 2012
are further indications of academic interest and scholarly activity in ethics in KO. These
contributions generated a research stream of bibliographic publications that should be
readily available for access through databases such as the Web of Science (WOS). As a
legacy for future research and expansion of the subdomain of ethics in KO, scholars and
practitioners interested in getting introduced into the tradition will inevitably be
influenced by the perception of the domain as presented by the databases. Bibliometric
studies can reveal snapshots of the domain’s research patterns that can warn of potential
ethical problems of silencing or misrepresentation of the knowledge of a particular
domain. This presentation will describe and analyze the results of our bibliometric
analysis in tandem with a Bardinian content analysis studying the representation of ethics
and KO in WOS and Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA)
Martínez-Ávila, Guimarães, Pinho, & Fox. EKO3 2015
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databases. The motivation of the study is to re-create how an average user will perceive
the topic of knowledge organization and ethics through the search results in these two
common research tools. We aim to highlight how the omissions and insufficiencies of
these databases provide an incomplete picture when superficially researching these
topics.
Methodology
The use of bibliometrics and/or citation analysis to study the conformation of a domain,
especially KO, has been recommended and used by Hjørland (2002, 2012, 2013),
Smiraglia (2008, 2010, 2013, 2014), Guimarães et al. (2012), Graf and Smiraglia (2012),
and Beak et al. (2013a; 2013b). As Hjørland (2002, 436) puts it, “it is empirical and
based on detailed analysis of connections between individual documents.” The retrieved
documents and omissions revealed by the databases, i.e. the system’s side, is one focus of
our research, with content analysis, i.e. the user’s side, as the other. Bardin’s variety of
content analysis (1989) consists of controlled interpretations and inferences drawn from
the contents of the texts, requiring three stages: pre-analysis; exploration of materials;
and processing of results, inferences and interpretations. This method has been previously
used in domain-analytical studies (e.g. Guimarães et al. 2012; Guimarães et al. 2014).
The combination of bibliometric analysis, along with a specific type of content analysis
and discourse analysis has also been used, for instance, by Mayor and Robinson (2014).
WOS was selected for its role as an important and prestigious resource for
research and the evaluation of science. Thus, the representation of the domain (ethics and
KO) is shaped by the high standards for indexing and their organization of the domain as
an ontological representation (or misrepresentation). To complement this, and to
overcome some of the limitations of WOS (e.g. the omission of Cataloging &
Classification Quarterly), we also analyzed LISTA, thus sidestepping deliberate
omissions of materials on ethics and knowledge organization due to criteria such as
coverage quotas and inclusion of unrelated disciplines. Aware that many ethical works in
KO do not actually use the word “ethics” in them, or that the term may not appear in the
main fields used in the indexing process, we also searched for related terms that might
come to the mind of the users or indexers such as “moral.” Similarly, our search query
Martínez-Ávila, Guimarães, Pinho, & Fox. EKO3 2015
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also included spelling variants and near-synonyms of “knowledge organization” such as
“information organization,” “knowledge organisation,” and “information organisation.”
The choice of these databases and terms, purposively excluding other more KO-oriented
resources such as the ISKO proceedings, which are not indexed, was meant to re-create
the results a non-specialized researcher would get as a first contact with the topics by
only using these databases.
Results
We retrieved 24 references from WOS and 39 from LISTA, 53 references in total,
excluding the overlapping references (showing a high number of unique references for
each database). The searches covered all the years and articles indexed by the databases.
The sample was narrowed to 43 references after excluding irrelevant references (5) and
inaccessible references (5). We conducted analyses and descriptions of aspects such as
years of publication, language, authors, and sources for both separate databases and total
results. Although some expected results emerged, such as two peaks of publications in
2009 and 2012 (coinciding with the conferences), some puzzling results also emerged
that might be explained by omissions and quirks of the databases. The results of the
Bardinian content analysis of the total corpus (assuming that users also develop an
overall perception of the domain through the database results) illustrate the configuration
of concepts retrieved from the studied databases. We worked with the basic categories:
values, problems, influential authors, schools of thought, contexts, tools, professions, and
processes. The results not only show the configurations and conceptual relationships
between the references of the corpus, but also a perception of the domain to users
approaching it through these databases. In the presentation, these results will be
presented, along with the identification of ethical concerns uncovered during the process.
References:
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Bardin, Laurence. 1989. L'analyse de contenu. 5.ed. Paris: PUF.
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