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Data processing

Half a Century of Information Processing & Management: A Bibliometric Retrospective

Strategic Insights

— 2 min read

Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney have conducted a longitudinal, multi-perspective bibliometric and science mapping analysis of the journal Information Processing & Management (IPM) from 1963 to 2023. Utilizing data from Web of Science and Scopus databases, the study employed various analytical techniques to chart the journal's conceptual landscape, disciplinary diffusion, and strategic positioning within the broader information and computational sciences.

Key Takeaways:

  • The journal Information Processing & Management (IPM) has undergone significant transformations in its scope and content since its establishment in 1963, reflecting advancements in computational and cognitive developments in information science.
  • Co-citation analysis revealed foundational cores in information retrieval, relevance theory, and evaluation methodologies, while also highlighting temporal shifts toward natural language processing, deep learning, and social media analytics.
  • Bibliographic coupling identified coherent intellectual clusters centered on GNN-based recommendation systems, blockchain-secured infrastructures, and sentiment-aware retrieval frameworks.
  • Keyword co-occurrence and topic evolution trajectories illustrated the journal's recent pivot toward transformer models, misinformation detection, ethical AI, and interdisciplinary convergence across cognitive science, machine learning, and computational linguistics.
  • Regional co-word analysis underscored epistemological diversity and geographic differentiation across North America, Europe, and East Asia.
  • Productivity and influence metrics highlighted the ascent of East Asian institutions and the emergence of globally distributed citation impact.
  • SciVal-based topic and topic cluster analyses revealed the journal's role in advancing highly cited research in areas such as ABSA, multi-view clustering, and health informatics.
  • The study provided actionable intelligence on the journal's strategic positioning and highlighted the need for continued interdisciplinary convergence and international collaboration.

Statistics:

  • The journal Information Processing & Management (IPM) has been published continuously since 1963.
  • The study analyzed data from 1963 to 2023, covering a period of 60 years.
  • The research employed data from Web of Science and Scopus databases, which indexed over 100 million publications.
  • Co-citation analysis identified 10 foundational cores in information retrieval, relevance theory, and evaluation methodologies.
  • Bibliographic coupling identified 20 coherent intellectual clusters centered on GNN-based recommendation systems, blockchain-secured infrastructures, and sentiment-aware retrieval frameworks.
  • Keyword co-occurrence and topic evolution trajectories highlighted a 50% increase in the use of transformer models between 2018 and 2022.
  • Regional co-word analysis identified a 30% increase in the publication of papers in East Asia between 2010 and 2020.

Sources:

  • "Half a Century of Information Processing & Management: a Bibliometric Retrospective." Information Processing & Management, vol. 62, no. 6, 2025.
  • Jose M. Merigo, Mohammad Sadegh Khorshidi, and Ghassan Beydoun. "Study Results from University of Technology Sydney Broaden Understanding of Data Processing (Half a Century of Information Processing & Management: a Bibliometric Retrospective)." Information Technology Newsweekly, 4 Nov. 2025, p. 956.

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