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Knowl. Org. 43(2016)No.5 331
D. Wolfram. The Power to Influence: An Informetric Analysis of the Works of Hope Olson
The Power to Influence:
An Informetric Analysis of
the Works of Hope Olson†
Dietmar Wolfram
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Information Studies,
P.O. Box 414, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A. 53201, USA,
Dietmar Wolfram is Professor in the iSchool at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His primary research
interests include scholarly communication, applied informetrics, information retrieval (IR) and the intersection
of IR and informetrics. He is currently Vice-President/President-Elect of the Association for Library and In-
formation Science Education.
Wolfram, Dietmar. 2016. “The Power to Influence: An Informetric Analysis of the Works of Hope Olson.”
Knowledge Organization 43: 331-337. 12 references.
Abstract: This paper examines the influence of the works of Hope A. Olson by conducting an ego-centric in-
formetric analysis of her published works. Publication and citation data were collected from Google Scholar and
the Thomson Reuters Web of Science. Classic informetrics techniques were applied to the datasets including co-
authorship analysis, citer analysis, citation and co-citation analysis and text-based analysis. Co-citation and text-
based data were analyzed and visualized using VOSviewer and CiteSpace, respectively. The analysis of her citation identity reveals how Dr.
Olson situates her own research within the knowledge landscape while the analysis of her citation image reveals how others have situated
her work in relation to the authors with whom she has been co-cited. This reflection of Dr. Olson’s research contributions reveals the influ-
ence of her scholarship not only on knowledge organization but other areas of library and information science and allied disciplines.
Received: 25 January 2016; Revised: 27 February 2016; Accepted: 3 March 2016
Keywords: informetric analysis, textual analysis, citations, Hope A. Olson
† The author would like to thank Sukjin You for assisting with portions of the data analysis.
1.0 Introduction sions about our respective research interests and noted
commonalties in our research agendas and how the meth-
I first met Hope Olson at a Canadian Association for In- odological approaches we each used could complement
formation Science/Association Canadienne de les Sciences one another. Hope had been conducting an in-class exer-
de l’Information conference held at the Université de cise in her information organization class that demon-
Sherbrooke in 1999. We had begun our careers in academe strated the inconstancy of inter-indexer consistency. She
at about the same time but had not crossed paths until noted that there appeared to be a strong power law rela-
then. Her research milieu was knowledge organization tionship in the overlap of indexing terms for larger groups
from a critical, humanities-based perspective, whereas mine of indexers. Several collaborative papers and presentations
was focused on information retrieval and informetrics em- on inter-indexer consistency and tagging resulted from this
ploying quantitative, positivist approaches. Over the next discussion over the next four years (Olson and Wolfram
several years we had the opportunity to become better ac- 2006, 2008; Wolfram, Olson and Bloom 2009).
quainted at subsequent CAIS/ACSI meetings and to gain In honor of Hope’s contributions to scholarship, and
an appreciation for each other’s research. I didn’t know at most notably to knowledge organization, this study pro-
the time that within a few years we would become col- vides an informetric analysis of her works by applying
leagues at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). both traditional and newer approaches to examine the im-
During these first few years at UWM, we had many discus- pact of her scholarship. Although metrics research has fre-
https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2016-5-331
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332 Knowl. Org. 43(2016)No.5
D. Wolfram. The Power to Influence: An Informetric Analysis of the Works of Hope Olson
quently been used to understand regularities in the way in- 2.0 Method
formation is produced and used at a disciplinary or sub-
disciplinary level, it also lends itself to detailed examination Records of Dr. Olson’s publications were initially identified
of individuals and their influence on the academic land- in Thomson Reuters Web of Science (WoS) Core Collec-
scape. The title of this paper borrows from Dr. Olson’s tion using ‘Olson H*’ as the author in early September
most cited work: The Power to Name: Locating the Limits of 2015 for the full length of UW-Milwaukee’s WoS subscrip-
Subject Representation in Libraries (Olson 2002). In this book, tion period (1987-2015). The returned items were proc-
she outlines how early classification pioneers established essed to remove publications not authored by Hope along
conventions that have biased or influenced representation. with minor works such as book reviews or letters. This set
In a sense, what researchers do is similar. A scholar’s prod- of 34 publications, spanning 1995 to 2012, represented the
ucts, in the form of publications, may influence both con- subset of Dr. Olson’s oeuvre indexed by WoS. These records
temporary and future researchers. The impact of scholars served as the core dataset for the citation analyses con-
and their scholarly products may be assessed in different ducted. WoS allows searchers to download the full biblio-
ways. Over the past half-century, a number of techniques graphic records of retrieved items, which includes biblio-
and metrics have been developed to assess scholarly influ- graphic details of the sources referenced in each docu-
ence. ment, representing Hope’s citation identity. Using the re-
At the heart of metric investigations is a set of meas- trieved publication set, the Create Citation Report feature
ures based on data associated with scholarly products. of WoS was then selected to provide citation data regard-
These include citation-based measures, those based on col- ing Hope’s publications. By then clicking on the Citing Ar-
laboration and, increasingly, the textual content of an au- ticles link on the citation report page, a list of all publica-
thor’s oeuvre or body of work. Citation analysis, in particu- tions that have cited the list of Hope’s papers is produced.
lar, has been used to assess the influence of an individual, Selecting the Analyze Results feature, followed by Authors
publication or journal based on the references they provide and then selecting the desired scope produces a list of all
in their own work, the citations their works receive and the citers (citation image makers). By downloading the full re-
works and people with whom they are co-cited (i.e., cited cords along with the references of these records, authors
together in the same work). The relationship between cita- who have been co-cited with Dr. Olson may be identified
tion analysis and knowledge organization has been studied (citation image). Self-citations (i.e., citing records authored
by Hjørland (2013), who noted that mapped relationships by Hope) were removed from this dataset so that the
based on co-citation analysis may be used to represent so- analysis reflected only the influence of citing authors other
cial knowledge organization systems. than Hope.
White (2000) proposed the use of ego-centric citation To analyze Hope’s citation data, the WoS citing and cita-
analysis to gain insight in the influence of researchers by tion records were imported into two scientific visualization
examining not just the citations received but the origin of analysis software packages. VOSviewer (van Eck &
the citations, namely the citers. He introduced two con- Waltman 2009) permits the visualization of bibliographic
cepts related to citer analysis. A “citation identity” consists networks as nodes and links based on extracted data such
of all the authors a citing author cites. “Citation image as authors and their co-citations. The influence of nodes
makers” are those authors who cite an author of interest. (authors, journals, papers) and their relationships are visu-
White also delineated concepts related to the co-citation of ally represented as proximities and link strengths based on
authors and introduced the idea of a “citation image,” co-occurrences. Related nodes may be clustered into
which consists of all authors with whom an author of in- groups identifying further affinities. VOSviewer was used
terest has been co-cited. To demonstrate these concepts, to visualize Hope’s citation identity and citation image. Al-
White (2001) compiled the citer patterns for eight promi- though VOSviewer also possesses text analysis capabilities,
nent information scientists. White’s call for more citer- another visualization package, CiteSpace (Chen 2006), was
based research has been answered by several researchers. used because of its ability to identify relationships based
Cronin and Shaw (2002), for example, explored the citation on phrases and not just explicit terms. Like VOSviewer,
identities of three information science scholars. Included CiteSpace uses citation and textual data from bibliographic
in their analysis was the total number of citers along with sources such as WoS to explore relationships among bib-
more traditional citation-based measures. Similarly, Bar-Ilan liographic entities of interest as networks of nodes and
(2006) conducted an ego-centric analysis of computer sci- links. It can also process citation and co-citation networks.
entist Michael O. Rabin that incorporated White’s ideas as CiteSpace also has text visualization abilities that incorpo-
well as co-authorship data. The present contribution takes rate natural language processing techniques on noun
a similar approach by applying citation, co-author and lan- phrases or keywords. The software allows data to be
guage-based analysis of Hope Olson’s body of work. viewed through selected time slices. For the present analy-
https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2016-5-331
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Knowl. Org. 43(2016)No.5 333
D. Wolfram. The Power to Influence: An Informetric Analysis of the Works of Hope Olson
sis, a single time slice was used for the text appearing in will automatically cluster nodes on the map with clusters
sources published by Hope and the identified publications of citing behavior represented by different colors. The
that cite Hope’s work due to the relatively small dataset. clusters were limited to membership of at least six authors
It should be noted that not all of Dr. Olson’s research given the relatively small dataset from which cluster mem-
contributions are indexed in Web of Science. This is one bers were determined. Also, the smaller number of total
current limitation associated with relying on a citation da- clusters provides a larger number of members per cluster
tabase such as WoS or Elsevier’s Scopus (which was not to assist in the interpretation of the agglomerations. The
available for the study). Although providing a rich set of clusters roughly correspond to three primary research areas
data for those sources that are indexed, other sources such of Hope’s interests. The green cluster with members on
as monographs and conference proceedings, which are the upper and left part of the map represents aspects of
common dissemination outlets in LIS, may not be in- cataloging and classification applications and education. It’s
cluded. For this reason, citation data were also collected not surprising that the Book Industry Study Group and
from Google Scholar (GS) using Publish or Perish (http:// OCLC are not closely aligned to specific authors, so they
www.harzing.com/pop.htm), which casts a broader net are situated more distantly from the authors. The blue clus-
than WoS and Scopus, and may result in more publications ter on the right side represents authors who investigate
being reported and higher citation counts. Despite casting subject access, indexing and information retrieval, corre-
a broader net, neither Google Scholar nor Publish or Per- sponding to Hope’s interests in areas such as subject access
ish provides direct access to the same rich array of cita- and inter-indexer consistency. The red cluster, for which
tion-based data or the same range of search features. As a several labels do not appear due to their close proximity,
result, only citation counts for the GS data are reported. primarily address Dr. Olson’s interests: philosophy and
The counts are higher than those reported by WoS for feminist perspectives in knowledge organization as well as
those publications WoS indexed. some pioneers in information science research.
3.0 Results 3.3 Citation image makers and citation image
3.1 Summary data Dr. Olson’s citation image makers—that is, those who have
cited Hope’s work as recorded by WoS—comprise 137 au-
Google Scholar lists 99 publications (monographs, jour- thors. These include authors who have published in disci-
nal articles, conference proceedings, editorials and other plinary areas such as library and information science (LIS),
documents) with over 1,100 citations and an h-index of communication, education, the natural sciences and the
17. An author’s h-index (Hirsch 2005), y, is a measure of humanities. The citation image makers help to situate Dr.
influence where an author has published y items that have Olson’s work by creating her citation image, which identi-
each been cited at least y times. Based on her listed oeuvre fies the authors with whom Hope has been co-cited.
in GS, she has co-authored with 34 students, academics The references in the citation image makers’ papers
and professional colleagues (Table 1). provided the co-citation data that represent her citation
image. The raw dataset was cleaned to remove selected re-
3.2 Citation identity cords. Citations to sources marked Anonymous were ex-
cluded. Similarly, one author, Makarov MN, was excluded
A researcher’s citation identity reflects the influences of a due to the far proximity of the author from the main body
researcher’s work. It also reveals how authors situate them- of the map. Co-citations arising from Hope’s own work
selves within a disciplinary landscape based on their citing were removed to eliminate the influence of self-citations.
behavior. The resulting VOSviewer co-citation visualiza- The top 68 authors, consisting of those authors for which
tion for Hope’s citation identity for the 34 authors cited at there were at least seven citations, were included in the
least three times appears in Figure 1. Note that some au- VOSviewer co-citation analysis mapping (Figure 2). Clus-
thors with close proximity to others may have their labels ters were set to a minimum size of four authors.
hidden by the software. The size of the nodes indicates the The five authors with whom Hope has been cited most
relative importance of the respective author based on cita- frequently are: Hjørland, B; Floridi, B, Foucault, M; Begh-
tion totals. The most frequently cited authors in Hope’s tol, C; and Frohmann, B. This list contains philosophers
oeuvre (other than her own work) are: Dewey, M; Cutter, and philosophy-influenced researchers, reflecting how
CA; Aristotle; Cleverdon, CW; Foskett, AC; Markey, K; much as Dr. Olson’s research has also been informed by
OCLC; and Swanson, DR. Most of these authors reflect these areas. Although frequently co-cited with Dr. Olson,
Dr. Olson’s interests in cataloguing and classification or are the locations of authors in the map are influenced by every
pioneering researchers in information science. VOSviewer author in the analysis. The five clusters reflect broad areas
https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2016-5-331
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334 Knowl. Org. 43(2016)No.5
D. Wolfram. The Power to Influence: An Informetric Analysis of the Works of Hope Olson
Citations Author Title Year
The power to name: locating the limits of subject representation in
142 HA Olson 2002
libraries
Mapping beyond Dewey's boundaries: Constructing classificatory
109 HA Olson 1998
space for marginalized knowledge domains
81 HA Olson The power to name: Representation in library catalogs 2001
64 HA Olson, JJ Boll Subject analysis in online catalogs 2001
60 H Olson Quantitative" versus" qualitative research: The wrong question 1995
54 HA Olson How we construct subjects: A feminist analysis 2007
Standardization, objectivity, and user focus: A meta-analysis of sub-
54 HA Olson, R Schlegl 2001
ject access critiques
47 HA Olson Sameness and Difference 2011
44 HA Olson Difference, culture and change: The untapped potential of LCSH 2000
43 HA Olson Exclusivity, teleology and hierarchy: Our Aristotelean legacy 1999
Knowledge organization in research: A conceptual model for orga-
29 LM Given, HA Olson 2003
nizing data
The feminist and the emperor's new clothes: Feminist deconstruc-
27 HA Olson 1997
tion as a critical methodology for library and information studies
25 HA Olson The ubiquitous hierarchy: An army to overcome the threat of a mob 2004
19 HA Olson, D Wolfram Syntagmatic relationships and indexing consistency on a larger scale 2008
18 A Kublik, V Clevette, D Ward, HA Olson Adapting dominant classifications to particular contexts 2003
Patriarchal structures of subject access and subversive techniques for
18 HA Olson 2001
change
Feminist locales in Dewey's landscape: Mapping a marginalized
17 HA Olson, DB Ward 1997
knowledge domain
Indexing consistency and its implications for information architec-
17 HA Olson, D Wolfram 2006
ture: a pilot study
Between control and chaos: an ethical perspective on authority con-
17 HA Olson 1996
trol
16 H Olson Subject access to women's studies materials 1991
A method for comparing large scale inter-indexer consistency using
16 D Wolfram, HA Olson 2013
IR modeling
Dewey thinks therefore he is: The epistemic stance of Dewey and
15 HA Olson 1996
DDC
The power to name: Marginalizations and exclusions of subject rep-
14 HA Olson 1996
resentation in library catalogues
Integrating diversity across the LIS curriculum: An exploratory study
13 B Mehra, HA Olson, S Ahmad 2011
of instructors' perceptions and practices online
Measuring consistency for multiple taggers using vector space mod-
12 D Wolfram, HA Olson, R Bloom 2009
eling
12 HA Olson Thinking professionals: teaching critical cataloguing 1997
12 HA Olson Universal models: a history of the organization of knowledge 1994
Cultural discourses of classification: Indigenous alternatives to the
11 HA Olson 1999
tradition of Aristotle, Durkheim and Foucault
Charting a journey across knowledge domains: Feminism in the
10 HA Olson, DB Ward 1998
Dewey Decimal Classification
9 HL Lee, HA Olson Hierarchical navigation: An exploration of Yahoo! directories 2005
Table 1. Citation summary of Hope Olson’s most cited works (Google Scholar)
of LIS and allied subject areas, demonstrating the rele- more scattered magenta cluster includes researchers who
vance of Hope’s work across LIS and other fields. The red have contributed to historical or foundational aspects of
cluster in which Hope features prominently includes au- the field. The yellow cluster consists of researchers who
thors whose works address information organization and use more quantitative or informetrics-based approaches in
retrieval. The green cluster with Birger Hjørland includes LIS. The range of areas represented indicates the Dr. Ol-
knowledge organization researchers who are known for son’s work has application across the breadth of methodo-
humanistic research approaches. The blue cluster includes logical approaches and topical areas of LIS.
researchers more broadly in LIS or other humanities. The
https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2016-5-331
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Knowl. Org. 43(2016)No.5 335
D. Wolfram. The Power to Influence: An Informetric Analysis of the Works of Hope Olson
Figure 1. Citation identity map for Hope Olson
Figure 2. Citation image map for Hope Olson
https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2016-5-331
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D. Wolfram. The Power to Influence: An Informetric Analysis of the Works of Hope Olson
3.4 Text-based themes tions demonstrate that one individual can indeed influence
(or inspire) researchers within and across disciplines.
CiteSpace performs selected textual analyses where noun
phrases associated with publication titles and abstracts may References
be analyzed. A network of the 30 most frequent noun
phrases was constructed for Dr. Olson’s own publications Bar-Ilan, Judit. 2006. “An Ego-centric Citation Analysis
based on text appearing in the titles and abstracts of the of the Works of Michael O. Rabin Based on Multiple
retrieved records. Unlike a simple word cloud, which only Citation Indexes.” Information Processing & Management
lists terms based on frequency, the CiteSpace textual analy- 42:1553-66.
sis also provides a network analytic context for the terms Chen, Chaomei. 2006. “CiteSpace II: Detecting and Visu-
or phrases. Figure 3 summarizes the most prominent noun alizing Emerging Trends and Transient Patterns in Sci-
phrases present in Dr. Olson’s work. One can see the sig- entific Literature.” Journal of the American Society for In-
nificance of knowledge organization-related phrases, in formation Science and Technology 57:359-77.
particular those related to classification and allied areas that Cronin, Blaise and Debora Shaw. 2002. “Identity-creators
have influenced her research such as information retrieval and Image-makers: Using Citation Analysis and Thick
and feminist deconstruction. The thickness of the lines in- Description to Put Authors in their Place.” Scientometrics
dicates the strength between the phrases. Because the 54:31-49.
analysis only focuses on records indexed by WoS, the rep- Hirsch, J. E. 2005. “An Index to Quantify an Individual's
resentation of research areas published as part of confer- Scientific Research Output.” Proceedings of the National
ence proceedings or monographs may not be as strongly academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102:165
reflected in the map due to the more limited coverage. 69-72.
When the same analysis is applied to the title and ab- Hjørland, Birger. 2013. “Citation Analysis: A Social and
stract fields associated with Hope’s citation image makers Dynamic Approach to Knowledge Organization.” In-
for the top 50 noun phrases, what becomes evident is formation Processing and Management 49:1313-25.
that her contributions have influenced others’ work in Olson, Hope A. 2002. The Power to Name: Locating the Lim-
not only knowledge organization but other areas of li- its of Subject Representation in Libraries. Dordrecht, The
brary and information science as well. For instance, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
themes of library practice, research methods and infor- Olson, Hope A. and Dietmar Wolfram. 2006. “Indexing
mation science are represented in the map (Figure 4). Consistency and its Implications for Information Ar-
chitecture: A Pilot Study.” IA Summit. http://citeseerx.
4.0 Conclusion ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.105.6370&
rep=rep1&type=pdf
The use of informetric techniques that rely on publication, Olson, Hope A. and Dietmar Wolfram. 2008. “Syntag-
citation and textual data of authors can shed light not only matic Relationships and Indexing Consistency on a
on larger entities of analysis such as disciplines but also can Larger Scale.” Journal of Documentation 64:602-15.
be revealing of the contributions and impact of individu- van Eck, Nees and Ludo Waltman. 2009. “Software Sur-
als. Metric techniques may also be used to represent social vey: VOSviewer, a Computer Program for Bibliomet-
knowledge organization systems (Hjørland 2013). This ric Mapping.” Scientometrics 84:523-38.
study has investigated the influence of one noted scholar White, Howard D. 2000. “Toward Ego-centered Citation
in knowledge organization using these techniques. Hope Analysis.” In The Web of Knowledge, ed. Blaise Cronin
Olson has built an international reputation as a scholar and and Helen Barsky Atkins. ASIS Monograph Series.
educator over a professional and academic career that has Medford, NJ: Information Today, 475-96.
spanned several decades. Of particular note are her contri- White, Howard D. 2001. “Authors as Citers Over Time.”
butions to subject representation and classification, inter- Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
indexer consistency, feminist perspectives and research Technology 52:87-108.
methods. The co-citation analyses, both from the citation Wolfram, Dietmar, Hope A. Olson and Raina Bloom.
identity and citation image perspectives, reveal a scholar 2009. “Measuring Consistency for Multiple Taggers
who not only is influenced by researchers in a range of ar- Using Vector Space Modeling.” Journal of the American
eas of LIS and other fields but whose research is also cited Society for Information Science and Technology 60:1550-71.
in many areas of LIS and other disciplines. The textual
analysis revealed equally broad influences based on the
noun phrases present in Hope’s work and those used by
authors who have cited her work. Dr. Olson’s contribu-
https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2016-5-331
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D. Wolfram. The Power to Influence: An Informetric Analysis of the Works of Hope Olson
Figure 3. Relationships among identified phrases and concepts in Hope Olson’s work
Figure 4. Relationships among identified phrases and concepts in articles citing Hope Olson’s work
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