1, the difference between bibliometrics and content analysis
Bibliometrics is a branch of library and information science, which uses mathematical statistics to describe, evaluate and predict the present situation and development trend of science and technology with the help of various characteristics of literature. Content analysis method is a scientific method to analyze the content of the research object and see the essence through the phenomenon. There are some differences between them. Let's compare their differences from the aspects of nature, methodological basis, research object, application field, research focus, research purpose and existing limitations.
First, the nature is different. The characteristic of bibliometrics is that its output must be quantitative information content, and it is a quantitative analysis method based on mathematics and statistics. Content analysis is a special method to analyze the contents of documents objectively and systematically. Its purpose is to reveal the hidden information content in the document and make intelligent predictions about the development of things. In fact, it is a semi-quantitative research method and a quantitative analysis method based on qualitative research.
Second, the methodological basis. Different bibliometrics are based on mathematical and statistical methods, and in the process of their application, they use reasoning and comparison methods to predict the distribution trend of documents. The essence of content analysis is to analyze the content of information and its changes. Although content analysis also uses mathematical methods, its application is still in the primary stage, belonging to semi-quantitative research methods, and the common methods are reasoning and comparison. Reasoning is divided into trend reasoning, * * * variable reasoning and causal reasoning; Comparison mainly includes trend comparison, comparison of different content groups, comparison within content and comparison with standard content. Content analysis method is to analyze the content characteristics of the research object through reasoning and comparison, and then verify the analysis results by mathematical statistics. The methodological basis of the two methods is different, which determines their research objects, research processes and application fields.
Third, the research objects are different. The research object of bibliometrics is mainly the external formal characteristics of documents, which is only applicable to scientific and technological documents with substantive forms, such as the parts with the characteristics of authors, quotations and vocabulary. The research object of content analysis method is the content characteristics of information, including not only explicit information content, but also potential or implied information content. Potential information does not directly describe the correlation of things, phenomena or processes, but indirectly reflects the characteristics and properties of things, phenomena or processes through external phenomena. With the continuous development of network technology, the research object of content analysis method is also expanding, including all kinds of text, images, audio, video, multimedia and other information, and its research focus has also shifted from statistical analysis of explicit knowledge to extraction and refining of tacit knowledge.
Fourth, the application fields are different. Bibliometrics is a special research method of library science and information science, which is mainly used for the research of scientific documents and is suitable for all disciplines. In the decades of development, the application fields of bibliometrics have been continuously expanded, including the distribution law of authors, the growth law of scattered documents, citation analysis and so on. Understand the development trend of the discipline through citation analysis; Application in determining the core journals of the discipline, and determining the scope of the core journals through statistical analysis; It is also widely used in the research of information retrieval system in the field of library and information system management.
As a high-level information analysis research method, content analysis method has considerable research and application value. It can be used to study the communication events of any document or record, so it has a wide range of applications, including various disciplines of social science, such as social science information, news communication research and government and social organization management. Content analysis plays different roles in different fields. In addition to the subject application field, in the space field, the network media sweeping the world has undoubtedly opened up a brand-new development space for content analysis, which is unmatched by bibliometrics. Although it is extremely difficult and arduous to analyze network content, its research prospect is bright, and it is also one of the main research and development directions of content analysis methods at present.
Fifth, the research focuses are different. Bibliometrics focuses on the "quantity" analysis of the formal characteristics of documents, analyzes the laws of documents from a quantitative point of view, and only indirectly reflects the relevance of contents; Content analysis focuses on the "quantity" analysis of document content characteristics. Content analysis not only studies the external characteristic information of the research object, but also studies the information contained in its specific content.
Sixth, the purpose of learning is different. The goal of bibliometrics is to study the distribution structure, quantitative relationship, change law and quantitative management of literature information, and then explore some structures, characteristics and laws of science and technology. Committed to the study of the movement and change law of document group entities, seeking to improve the management of document information and improve the efficiency of document information exchange.
From the perspective of communication, the research purpose of content analysis can be summarized into three aspects:
A. Compare the content of information disseminated with social reality. The value of content analysis lies not only in describing content trends, but also in helping us understand and explain social reality.
B. infer the attitude of the information disseminator from the information content. In most cases, media information naturally reflects the attitude of the media or communicators to a considerable extent.
C. infer the communication effect from the media content. When the audience comes into contact with a large number of content that is consistent with their original attitude and the same original cognitive structure, it is possible to increase the opportunities for the audience to identify with the media content, thus affecting the audience [2].
Although the above is the viewpoint of communication research, and the content of mass media communication is also the research object of information science, content analysis method is also applicable to the field of information science.
Seven, the existing limitations are different.
1, the limitations of bibliometrics are as follows:
A. Although bibliometrics is a quantitative method, its quantification is similar, random and fuzzy in many cases because its research involves both natural science and social science, both objective factors such as science and technology, and subjective factors such as society and psychology.
B in terms of theoretical research, all kinds of mathematical models currently used in bibliometrics are relatively simple, and only variables and single-parameter models are often considered. Obviously, this can only be rough and preliminary for describing complex social behaviors with artificial control factors and tendencies.
In application, bibliometrics does not solve the problem of combining theory with practice. There is still a big gap between the quantitative description level of bibliometrics and the actual situation that can objectively reflect the process of document information exchange. In this regard, it can be considered that the citation analysis method has made outstanding achievements in practical application.
D. it is flawed to use the law of price growth to represent scientific development. Price's law of growth is one of the famous laws of bibliometrics, which has a great influence on the study of the history of science, but there are some defects in using this law to represent the development of science. In a sense, scientific development can be said to be the development of scientific knowledge. Price's growth law assumes that all contributions to scientific knowledge are included in the literature, and the development of scientific knowledge is equal to the absolute number of scientific documents. One problem with this measurement method is that it is difficult to measure the "quality" of scientific papers, so this measurement research can only reflect a rough measurement of scientific development at best, and the so-called "knowledge explosion" and "information explosion" obtained according to the growth law of price index should also be re-recognized.
E. the defects of citation analysis in bibliometrics in scientific communication statistics. With the development of citation analysis, its application scope is expanding, and citation analysis has also been introduced into the research field of the history of science, but its applicability is also worth considering. In scientific papers, the motivation of citation is varied, not all citations are based on standards, and sometimes they have nothing to do with scientific communication. For example, in order to increase the weight of the paper, some authors cite so-called celebrity documents that are of no practical importance to the research work; Some quotations are based on the consideration of interpersonal relationship between colleagues; On the other hand, there is the problem of not quoting. In view of the above problems, although citation analysis, as an independent measurement method, has an enlightening effect on the study of the history of science, it is difficult to fully show the track of scientific development only by the skills of citation analysis.
2. The limitations of content analysis method are as follows:
A. Compared with bibliometrics, qualitative analysis is the main aspect of content analysis, which needs more human intervention. The process of determining analysis units and classifying categories is manual, and machines can rarely do it for them. Machines are good at data memory, numerical calculation and grammatical analysis, but semantic and pragmatic understanding, association and guessing are their weaknesses.
B the background of content analysis is induction, so this method can only generate new undiscovered or obvious hidden information or trends from existing information such as library science facts and data. In other words, content analysis should rely on objectivity, rather than an open method of exerting imagination.
C. Studying library science with content analysis method still needs a lot of statistical data and a long time, especially in some long-term tracking or large-scale content analysis work, it needs more manpower and time, manual operation is not competent, and computer-aided analysis is often needed.
D. Content analysis focuses on analyzing network data. Because the authenticity of network information can't be verified and the update cycle of network data is short, it can't guarantee the objectivity and systematicness of network data content analysis. Network information is so complicated that it is difficult to make a perfect classification system that most researchers can reach * * * knowledge. Therefore, how to determine the analysis unit is a problem that needs to be solved in network data content analysis.
2. Similarity between bibliometrics and content analysis.
Content analysis is essentially a bibliometrics method. Determining the analysis unit in content analysis is actually a process of measuring unit, and the coding process is actually a process of quantitative calculation. In the field of library and information science, all quantitative statistical analysis research based on literature belongs to bibliometrics. Therefore, there are some similarities between them: A. Both of them are quantitative analysis methods, both of which take the quantity of documents as the research object and the text of documents as the basic feature. B. The research steps of both are basically the same, and it is necessary to determine the research scope, take samples, define the analysis unit, make quantitative statistics on the analysis unit, and finally establish a regular conclusion reflecting its trend change according to the statistical results. In this process, both of them involve some quantitative processes, and statistics and speculation are carried out by expressing the characteristics of documents as some data indicators. C. the method adopted is simple and intuitive. Some measurement indicators used in bibliometrics take simple literature data as the core, such as literature growth rate and cited times. Content analysis method is also limited to the content with clear characteristics. Compared with the complex algorithms used in modern data mining, these two quantitative processing methods are simple, clear, rough and intuitive. D. The purpose of both studies is to find out the trends and laws of their development and changes through the analysis of the characteristics of the research objects, so as to facilitate the scientific and standardized management and utilization of information. E. Like other scientific research methods, both of them inevitably have their own shortcomings and defects. They are related, not isolated. They can also improve themselves by constantly learning from each other's strengths, so as to achieve the goal of mutual integration and comprehensive utilization.
3. The development prospect of bibliometrics and content analysis.
3. 1 The development trend of bibliometrics.
With the rapid development of information science and technology, the electronization, digitalization and networking of information resources are becoming more and more common. In this new social environment and technical conditions, there are many new trends in the development of bibliometrics.
3. 1. 1 From bibliometrics to informatics. Bibliometrics is the basis of information metrology, and information metrology is the development direction of bibliometrics. As far as the unit of measurement is concerned, bibliometrics has not only stopped at the unit of document measurement based on articles, volumes and volumes, but also started to go deep into the knowledge unit of document measurement and related information of documents, such as title, subject words, keywords, knowledge items, citation information, author, publisher, date, language and format, which have all become measurement objects. The electronic publication newly developed by Professor Guangzhuo Chen has the functions of information measurement and knowledge clustering, which opens up a new application field and development path for bibliometrics. In this way, it is possible to deepen the unit of measurement in bibliometrics from a document to every knowledge unit in the document, even to the level of a single word, thus making the analysis of information metrology possible.
3. 1.2 The merging trend of bibliometrics, scientometrics and informatics. The trend of combining three tests with learning accords with the so-called "big process" view of information science research. 1The papers of the 5th International Metrology Society held in Rochard Library and School of Information Science on the outskirts of Chicago in June, 1995 included the law and distribution of bibliometrics, the productivity of information and science, the application of bibliometrics, etc. This shows that "three measures" are closely related, and "three measures" should develop into a unified discipline of information measurement that forms a "big process".
3. 1.3 The new development direction of bibliometrics-the emergence and development of network information metrology. Network information metrology is developed on the basis of bibliometrics. With the electronization and networking of information resources and the surge of network literature information, many principles of bibliometrics have become incomplete and inadequate in the network age, which is the background condition for the emergence of network bibliometrics. Network bibliometrics is a marginal subject mainly composed of network technology, network management, information resource management and information metrology. It is also a new development direction and an important research field of bibliometrics, with broad development prospects.
3.2 Application prospect of content analysis method
3.2. 1 Informatization has opened up a new development space for content analysis. With the development of information technology, the informatization trend represented by computer and network applications not only swept the developed countries, but also affected the vast number of developing countries. In library and information work, give full play to the high intelligence awareness and information processing ability of information researchers, and use content analysis method to turn the original quantitative research problem into qualitative and quantitative research. This research method is more systematic and objective than other quantitative methods.
3.2.2 Network data analysis is the key research direction of content analysis. The rapid growth of network information and literature provides convenience for the acquisition of information and knowledge. However, the network information is huge, the form is complex, and the good and the bad are mixed. The increase of network data is reflected in the increase of spam to a certain extent, which greatly increases the burden on users. Therefore, the acquisition and mining of network data will be a key research direction of future content analysis. The application of content analysis method in analyzing network data includes: describing network information resources, inferring the tendency and intention of network communication subjects, studying the effect of network communication, and analyzing the changing trend.
4. The comprehensive utilization prospect of bibliometrics and content analysis.
With the development of network technology and related technologies, people are eager for a new technology to help them find accurate information, which requires combining quantitative analysis methods with qualitative analysis methods and applying them to the analysis of various information. Comprehensive utilization of bibliometrics and content analysis is the way to achieve this goal. Through the analysis and research of the above two methods, we can know that bibliometrics and content analysis are related to some extent, but they have certain limitations in practical application. If they are combined, they can complement each other and make them play a better guiding role in information services. For example, when search engines use bibliometrics to measure information, they often find that a large number of irrelevant information is retrieved and confused, which brings inconvenience to users. If we can add the theoretical content of content analysis to the spider algorithm of search engine and analyze the content of the searched information, we can provide users with more accurate information.
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