Research productivity in librarianship: a bibliometric analysis and visualization based on ISI Web of Science

PurposeThis study endeavored to examine the bibliometric statistical analysis of published documents on academic, national, special and public libraries during 2001-2024. To accomplish the research objectives, a consolidated data consisting of 15,761 published literature retrieved from the indexing database ISI Web of Science. Design/methodology/approach This study used the bibliometric analysis method that portrayed scientific panorama of countries, organizations, research nd their role in the production of scholarly publications. The outcomes of bibliometric analysis revealed that the most preferred document type is research paper, which has been mostly published in the English language, and publications are steadily increasing in numbers. The work of 19,380 authors, depicts Jarmo Saarti as the most prolific contributor. The University of South Africa, South Africa, appears as the prominent organization out of 6,083, whereas the USA seems a highly yielding country among the global list of 138 countries. Findings The findings reveal that out of 119 research areas, information science and library science, computer science, educational research, arts and humanities are the major published domains. After a comprehensive exploration, the study proves that total 20,351 author keywords have been used, whereas the most frequently used term is "academic libraries". Following the recent global trend of citations, the obtained data also highlights the article category as most cited documents. Similarly, a published article "role of the academic library in promoting student engagement in learning" by Kuh, G.D. and Gonyea, R.M. occurs the most cited article. Originality/value This study contributes to the current knowledge accumulation by its lack of year, country, region and language limits.