Abstract:

Based on 4,251 bibliometricsrelated articles collected from the Web of Science during 19942014, this paper examined the disciplinary background, geographical coverage, thematic preference and favorite journals of the authors, from a bibliometric perspective. The first finding is that Library & Information Science (LIS) has been overshadowed by Medicine in both publications and citations, involving bibliometric studies. Second, in the area of bibliometrics the status of Americas and East Europe has been declining, instead, the status of Asia and West Europe has been keeping on a rise. Last but not least, the focus on bibliometrics has been rising steadily during 19942014, most bibliometric studies focused on citation analysis, network analysis, impact factor, h index and additional derivatives etc., meanwhile, fundamental bibliometric principles were ignored. Most of the authors preferred to publish their bibliometricrelated work in LIS journals, except economists and medical scientists who preferred journals in their own fields. Furthermore, this paper discussed the trend of interdisciplinarity concerning bibliometrics.

Keywords: Bibliometrics, Research community, Research trend, Research focus, Interdisciplinarity