Länkanalys
En undersökning av ett biblioteks- och informationsvetenskapligt delfält
The aim of this study is to analyse and investigate a rather new field of LIS studies, i.e. link analysis which is a part of webometrics. Webometrics has been described as the quantitative study of web based phenomena drawing on bibliometric or informetric methods. Link analysis has its counterpart in citation analysis within the field of bibliometrics. The questions the study investigates are if webometrics can provide LIS with new knowledge and if there is a place for webometric studies in LIS research. The study was carried out by a juxtaposition of different texts. As a background to the empirical part of the study a presentation of informetrics and bibliometrics is given. A comparison between link analysis and citation analysis is also offered. The empirical part displays two different views on bibliometrics and webometrics, as well as seven webometric studies of different kinds. The conclusion drawn from the text study is that link analysis has much in common with citation analysis, and that webometrics is a promising area of research, though it has some problems to overcome before it can survey sound research in the field of LIS. These problems mainly consist of the difficulty to gather reliable data for the analysis.