Research dynamics, impact, and dissemination: A topic‐level analysis

In informetrics, journals have been used as a standard unit to analyze research impact, productivity, and scholarship. The increasing practice of interdisciplinary research challenges the effectiveness of journal‐based assessments. The aim of this article is to highlight topics as a valuable unit of analysis. A set of topic‐based approaches is applied to a data set on library and information science publications. Results show that topic‐based approaches are capable of revealing the research dynamics, impact, and dissemination of the selected data set. The article also identifies a nonsignificant relationship between topic popularity and impact and argues for the need to use both variables in describing topic characteristics. Additionally, a flow map illustrates critical topic‐level knowledge dissemination channels.