کتابداری و اطلاعرسانی (May 2024)
Analysis of the Knowledge of Mahdism Research in Iran with the Approach of Scientometrics and Information Clustering: A Case Study; Articles
Abstract
Objective: Scientific productions in the field of Mahdism have grown in the last two decades and due to its religious and political dimension in the region, conceptual challenges have been registered. As a result, knowing the contexts, priorities and analysis of the knowledge of the domain seems necessary. The purpose of this study is to investigate the knowledge structure in Mahdism research using co-word analysis. Methods: This research is applied in terms of purpose. In order to analyze the concept of knowledge in the field of Mahdism research, a combination of scientometric methods, information clustering and network analysis have been used. The research tools include scientometric software such as: "Ravar_matrix, Ucinet, NetDraw, and Vosviewer”. The research community includes all the articles in the field of Mahdism in domestic magazines from the databases of " Noormags, Magiran, and SID" from the beginning to October 2023. Results: The findings indicate that in the last two decades, there has been a significant growth in the research studies of Mahdism. Also, many authors from the Alimah Hoza and University have contributed to its scientific productions. In this research, it was found that the authors follow the model of an authorship. Collaboration in the form of co-authorship is less involved. Descriptive findings about the journals of this field showed that 5 journals are considered core journals in this field. The findings showed the field of Mahdavi studies in other fields of studies such as: social sciences, sociology, historical and political sciences, education and philosophy, art and literature interdisciplinary relations. The results of co-word analysis showed that more than 1341 concepts or keywords were mentioned and the concepts of "The Holy Mehdi, the waiting, appearance, doctrines of Mahdism, Extremist, false claimants" had the highest frequency among all concepts. Also, the conceptual pairs " the waiting - The Holy Mehdi, Islamic revolution-the waiting, The Holy Mehdi - last days, future study- Mahdism research, doctrine of Mahdoit- appearance " had the most co-occurrences. In addition, the concepts of "false claimants, Salafism, globalization, denial of Mahdism", social standards and culture of Mahdism were identified as emerging concepts in the research. The results related to clustering showed that the knowledge of this field in Iran consists of 21 main clusters. The first to third clusters include "the influence of the Islamic Revolution on Mahdism, traditions and hadiths of Mahdism, social challenges of Mahdism" respectively, have the most concepts. The analysis of the maps indicates that the concepts of this field have many conceptual relationships with each other, and the concentration percentage of the network is 0.5, which is average in terms of density. Conclusion: The results indicate that the volume of articles in this field of knowledge in Persian language is increasing day by day, and in terms of the number of researchers, it is a rich field. But the cooperation of authors is weak, and the number of magazines that publish articles in the field of Mahdism is also small. Many concepts have been proposed in this field, but a large percentage of them have been proposed only once in this field. The results of clustering indicate that the concepts formed in the field of Mahdavi studies will provide a suitable field for qualitative and theoretical research studies. In general, this research showed a big picture of concepts, conceptual clusters and relationships of concepts in the articles produced in the field of Mahdism.
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