Scientific production in Library and Information Science in Puerto Rico (1961-2020)

Library and information science research in Puerto Rico has scarcely been studied at all. The aim of this paper is to characterize Puerto Rico’s scientific production in this field for the period from 1961 to 2020. The study follows a bibliometric approach to analyze the evolution of scientific production, author productivity, dispersion and dissemination of literature, languages used for publication, and research areas. Results show that scientific production has been irregular, with no clear growth trend and low productivity. Puerto Rican specialized journals have had great difficulty in consolidating, which has affected the visibility of research results. As for research areas, papers dealing with the study and solution of practical problems in libraries predominate. This analysis concludes that scientific production in Puerto Rico follows some trends that can be observed in the Latin American and Caribbean region.