THE CONVERGENCE OF INFORMATION-SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION - A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

This study asks whether the disciplines of information science and communication are converging, as indicated by a bibliometric study of all core journals of both disciplines in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI(R)) for the period 1977 to 1987. Results show very little convergence between these disciplines, at least on the basis of cross-disciplinary journal citation patterns, although the number of journals involved has increased slightly over time. A few journals are mainly responsible for the cross-disciplinary citing, and they are primarily information science journals citing communication journals. The results may be of interest to those studying scholarly communication or bibliometrics, to faculty constructing curricula in either of the disciplines, to communication and information science scholars seeking new areas of research, and to collection development librarians in drawing the boundaries of these disciplines.