Intra- and Inter-institutional Collaborative Pairing Trends of LIS Field in South Korea

This study investigates the collaborative pairing patterns of the library and information science (LIS) field in South Korea at both intra- and inter-institutional levels. It is necessary to examine this timely topic considering the recent increasing trend of research collaboration in Korea. The network comes from the articles published in eight Korean LIS journals from 2008 to 2012. The network consists of one large component, nine small components with more than two nodes, and five isolated nodes having intra-institutional co-authorship. The largest component is a small world network but the density is low due to many low degree nodes. Central institutions were analysed using the centrality measure of social network analysis and tended to have co-authorship with various institutions and collaborative partnerships with other institutions in the network. It can be concluded that the distribution of intra- and inter-institutional co-authorship, institution type, regional features and core collaborative authors are influential factors in collaborative pairing. Institutions that have a high degree of centrality and betweenness centrality affect other institutions in their collaborative pairing. The result can be used to analyse co-authorship from diverse perspectives and facilitate active co-authorship at an institutional level.