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This study, using a new method called Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS), aims to examine the most important historic works written in the area of knowledge management (KM).

Preliminary data of this study have been extracted from Web of Science through scientometric methods. The references used in all the papers in the core journals in this field since 1980 to the end of 2014 were studied.

The distribution of resources in the area of KM based on the publication year indicates that this field of study, during time intervals 1900 to 1980, has seen eight major mutations. A considerable influence of such fields as economics, business, social networks analysis, organizational learning and economic sociology on the realm of KM is evident. The association of Polanyi with the mutations of 1958, 1962 and 1967 suggests his obvious influence on the evolution of KM. The ratio of articles to books among the whole documents detected by RPYS was 2-13 which could direct us to the point that the channel for information transformation in KM is more focused on books than on articles.

None of the few studies done by scientometric methods in the realm of KM has been seen through the issue of the historical origins of this area. This piece of research, using a new scientometric method, can be considered the first study in which the origins of KM over time have been studied.

Using science mapping analysis approach and co-word analysis, the present study explores and visualizes research fields and thematic evolution of the coronavirus. Based on this method, one can get a picture of the real content of the themes in the mentioned thematic area and identify the main minor and emerging themes.

This study was conducted based on co-word science mapping analysis under a longitudinal study (from 1988 to 2020). The collection of documents in this study was further divided into three subperiods: 1988–1998, 1999–2009 and 2010–2020. In order to perform science mapping analysis based on co-word bibliographic networks, SciMAT was utilized as a bibliometric tool. Moreover, WoS, PubMed and Scopus bibliographic databases were used to download all records.

In this study, strategic diagrams were demonstrated for the coronavirus research for a chronological period to assess the most relevant themes. Each diagram depended on the sum of documents linked to each research topic. In the first period (1988–1998), the most centralizations were on virology and evaluation of coronavirus structure and its structural and nonstructural proteins. In the second period (1999–2009), with due attention to high population density in eastern Asia and the increasing number of people affected with the new generation of coronavirus (named severe acute respiratory syndrome virus or SARS virus), publications have been concentrated on “antiviral activity.” In the third period (2010–2020), there was a tendency to investigate clinical syndromes, and most of the publications and citations were about hot topics like “severe acute respiratory syndrome,” “coronavirus” and “respiratory tract disease.” Scientometric analysis of the field of coronavirus can be regarded as a roadmap for future research and policymaking in this important area.

The originality of this research can be considered in two ways. First, the strategic diagrams of coronavirus are drawn in four thematic areas including motor cluster, basic and transversal cluster, highly developed cluster and emerging and declining cluster. Second, COVID-19 is mentioned as a hot topic of research.

This research aims to examine the intellectual structure of iMetrics through author co-citation analysis.

This research uses common techniques in bibliometrics and social network analysis. It analyses 5,944 records from the Web of Science in the field of iMetrics that are published between 1978 and 2014.

Findings indicated that researchers including “Garfield”, “Egghe”, “Glanzel”, “Leydesdorff” and “Price” have received many co-citations. The author co-citation analysis in iMetrics resulted in eight thematic clusters, including “theoretical foundations and citation analysis”, “sociology of science”, “science mapping and visualization”, “network analysis”, “classic laws of bibliometrics”, “webometrics”, “technometrics” and “miscellaneous”. “Theoretical foundations and citation analysis” is the biggest cluster which comprises 59 authors. The results suggest the crucial role of price medallists in shaping the intellectual structure of knowledge in iMetrics.

Extracting the patterns embedded in the knowledge structure of iMetrics studies provides beneficial information for both researchers and policymakers. This research study is valuable that used an appropriate set of records regarding both recall and precision. Furthermore, this study helps us better understand the characteristics of iMetrics, its subject areas, and the prominent authors in those areas.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the top researchers in information behaviour (IB) based on ideational and social influence indicators.

The population included papers on IB indexed in the Web of Science from 1980 to 2015. UCINET and Bibexcel were the tools used for measuring the ideational and social influence indicators. The correlations among the study variables were measured by applying SPSS and LISREL.

There was a significant relationship between IB researchers’ productivity and performance, and between ideational influence and social influence. The structural equation modelling showed that a researcher with top placement in his/her co-authorship network can gain higher ideational influence. In total, it seems that the single and traditional criteria are increasingly replacing new and integrative ones in measuring researchers’ scientific influence in fields including IB studies. Results have shown that based on total scores of the studied indicators, Spink, A., Nicholas, D., Ford, N., Huntington, P., Wilson, T.D., and Jamali, H.R. gained the high scores.

The current study used an integrative method based on influence indicators to identify the influential researchers in IB studies. None of the few studies done using bibliometric methods in the realm of IB has investigated the ideational and social influence indicators altogether.

This survey aims to provide an appropriate prototype for the Digital Reference Desk of the National Library of Iran.

Using a content analysis method, 33 digital reference desks of the national libraries around the world which offer their services in English are examined. A checklist was used to gather data based on specialists' points of view.

The findings show that specialists suggested 21 features were important and crucial to be included in the model.

The results in the paper reveal that there is a considerable difference between the present situation of the digital reference desks studied and the optimum situation suggested by Iranian specialists.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the quality of services provided by the Regional Information Center for Science and Technology (RICeST) employing the Six Sigma methodology.

The studied population in this research consists of the users of RICeST. To start with, 120 users of RICeST have been chosen as the samples in a simple random way. Next, in order to collect the data, the LibQUAL+ Questionnaire has been used. Having applied this questionnaire, the gap between the customers' expectations and perceptions has been identified and analyzed. Moreover, the given data are analyzed and their mean and standard deviations are calculated by “SPSS”. Then, in each of the evaluated cases, the calculated standard deviation is compared with the sigma level in the output table in order to specify the qualitative efficiency of services. Accordingly, the error rate in each of the provided services has been determined.

Findings revealed that staff at RICeST could meet the users' minimum expectations of this center in all cases except for the option “the courteous staff”; therefore, they have allocated the efficiency of 50 percent which is equal to 500,000 errors per million. In other words, the average rate seems to be true in all options about the staff in this center. The efficiency of 69.20 percent obtained from the users' view about the quality of existing resources of this center, represents their relative satisfaction with the information resources in RICeST. But it is just in the option “the presence of a web site in the center” that the level of users' expectations is equal to the actual level and the achieved efficiency of 99.97 percent. Finally, it has been found that the quality of library space at the actual level was lower than the maximum level of users' expectation, but higher than the level of users' minimum expectations. The efficiency of 69.20 percent about the physical space of RICeSt indicates 308,000 errors per million. Consequently, it is far from achieving the desired level or the maximum users' expectations.

The increasing expectations of users in libraries and information centers have caused that these types of centers need modern strategies and management techniques in order to comply with these increasing changes and requirements. Evaluating the service quality in the library means to assess the effectiveness of services provided. The effect of evaluating the service quality is not limited to this fact, in which the services are provided only for users, but it is also focusing on the users' application level and compliance with their information needs and satisfaction of the quantity and quality of services.