Big data in Information Science literature

Abstract

The large amount of structured and unstructured data, called big data, signals for new methods to record, organize, analyze and provide access to this information. To help understand how information Science (IS) has incorporated Big Data as a topic of study, this paper researched the scientific production of the area indexed in main referential databases. The paper reviews the emergence of large volumes of data, the resulting impacts experienced by the area of Information Science and by the information scientist, and the related concepts of e-science and data science. In this bibliometric study, data collection was done through searches in referential IS databases to identify the scientific literature on big data. Authors and their programs, universities and countries were identified. Then the works were categorized through content analysis of their abstracts. The results present a map of how Information Science scientific output has approached big data, showing topics of research and a ranking of universities/organizations, graduate programs, authors and countries.