Citation Network Analysis Of Educational Technology Journals From CSSCI

Journal citation network is an important aspect of reflecting the knowledgeinnovation and dissemination process. With the rapid growth of knowledge, journalcitation network has become a huge knowledge network structure. Educationaltechnology as a new interdisciplinary, how is its academic influence of the corejournals? How is its discipline integration and internationalization degree? Which arehigh cited documents of journals? what are the theoretical basis, research focus andresearch frontier? In this paper, based on citation network of educational technologyjournals from CSSCI, integration of citation analysis theory and social networkanalysis method, try to undertake a discussing to afore-mentioned problems.By counting CSSCI database subject source directories between 2006 and 2010,the paper select four kinds of educational technology source journals included in thefive years for the study, they are:“E-education Research”,“China EducationalTechnology”、“Open Education Research”and“Modern Educational Technology”.Citation analysis of the object, taking the quantitative analysis and qualitative researchmethod of combining, quantitative analysis as a main method, qualitative research asa supplemented method, analyze the relationship of four kinds of journals fromdifferent dimensions, as well as four source journals of educational technology inthese four between the journals and the journals of other disciplines, foreignperiodicals. By content analysis with highly cited literature, emergent literature andtheir citing articles, discover the educational technology’s theoretical basis, researchfocus and research forefront.The specific research topics include: analysis of the theories and methods in thestudy of citation networks. Citation analysis, citation network, social network analysismethods described in the citation network analysis, social network analysis, and citation visualization software-Citespace is introduced. The educational technologyjournal citation network is analyzed. We evaluate the four journals’academicinfluence, discipline blend of nature and the degree of internationalization by citationanalysis, the reference to the network distribution of subjects and the reference pointof view of foreign periodicals on the data for statistical analysis. We obtaineducational technology’s research base by content analysis of high cited literaturebetween 2006 and 2010. By analyzing highly cited documents’citing articleskeywords co-occurrence network map, combined with the contents of the citingarticles, we obtain a research focus of Educational Technology between 2006 and2010. Emergent literature citing articles keywords co-occurrence network map,combined with emergent literature citing articles content analysis, we can discoverresearch frontier of Educational Technology.Finally the conclusion is: first, the reference relationship between the fourjournals of Educational Technology is more frequent.“E-education Research”and“China Educational Technology”have high academic influence, especially theacademic sphere and influence of“E-education Research”is the most widely.Research areas of“Open Education Research”and“Modern Educational Technology”is quite broad, more exchanges with other journals, thus forming a more extensive andopen academic research network. Distribution from the four journal reference networkand network disciplines can be seen that, Educational Technology cite knowledge ofthe discipline itself, other than their own and other disciplines of education is mostclosely related with language disciplines, such as school, library, information anddocumentation is also more frequent contact, and overall discipline within therelatively dense, relatively loose disciplines outside the state. This also shows thatgrowth and development of the Educational Technology more concern with their owndiscipline, and other disciplines between academic exchanges to be strengthened.Third, the four journals concern with external literature very highly. This note thedegree of internationalization of domestic education journals is graduallystrengthened, the scope of the study is to expand from domestic to foreign, more sophisticated research methods, I believe with foreign educational technology journalsof cooperation will be closer. Fourth, from a statistical point of view of the highlycited literature, an important theoretical basis of the Educational Technology consistsof ten major works. Literature and its analysis of the citing articles was cited on thehigh point of view, the hot research field of Educational Technology are the basictheory of Educational Technology, the application of IT education, distance education,instructional design, virtual learning community and social network analysis, andseveral other aspects. Through the analysis of the emergent literature, citing articles,front research areas of Educational Technology are learning environment design,digital learning, instructional design, mobile learning, distance education.