Unveiling Novelty Evolution in the field of Library and Information Science in China

2026-06-29

AI Summary

This study investigates the distribution of novelty in scholarly publications within China’s library and information science (LIS) field and examines its variations across journals, research topics, and time. Grounded in combinatorial innovation theory, the research employs the BERTopic model to identify thematic structures in CSSCI-indexed papers from 2000 to 2022 and computes novelty scores based on citation pairs. Complementing this, co-authorship network analysis explores the relationship between collaboration patterns and novelty. The study presents the first topic-level analysis of novelty evolution in Chinese LIS literature, revealing that archival science topics exhibit relatively low novelty, whereas those related to journal evaluation and patent technologies demonstrate higher novelty. Overall, novelty shows an upward trend over time, with highly novel papers more likely to involve inter-institutional collaborations, thereby elucidating how research topics and collaborative structures jointly shape academic innovation.

Abstract

This study analyzes the novelty distribution of scholarly papers in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) in China, with a focus on differences across journals, research topics, and time periods. Articles published in Chinese LIS journals indexed by the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) from 2000 to 2022 were collected as the research sample. BERTopic was applied to paper abstracts to identify research topics, and novelty scores were calculated based on the combinatorial innovation theory of reference pairs cited by focal papers. The study then examined the novelty of papers under different topics and further analyzed author collaboration patterns to explain how collaboration may be associated with paper novelty. The results show that archival research topics generally have lower novelty, whereas topics related to journal evaluation and patent technology display higher novelty in Chinese LIS research. Overall, the novelty of papers in this field has gradually increased over time. Papers with different topics and novelty levels also show distinct collaboration patterns: low-novelty topics are more often associated with solo authorship, while high-novelty topics tend to involve a higher proportion of inter-institutional collaboration. This study reveals the topic-level characteristics and temporal trends of novelty in Chinese LIS research and provides a new perspective for understanding how research topics and collaboration patterns influence scholarly innovation.

Problem

• novelty
• Library and Information Science
• research topics
• temporal trends
• scholarly innovation

Innovation

• novelty measurement
• combinatorial innovation
• BERTopic
• research collaboration
• topic modeling