Information literacy and research support services in academic libraries: A bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020

This article attempted to examine research support services, information services, print collections, digital resources and information literacy using bibliometric analysis from 2001 to 2020. The main aim was to consolidate the published studies on the research support services in academic libraries in the Web of Science (WoS) indexed documents. However, there has been a lack of quantitative measurements on the subject. Thus, we used the bibliometric method and found a total of 4079 published documents. The study findings revealed that the topic of ‘information literacy and library’ was on top with a total number of 2168 publications, 3047 articles as a type of published documents, 3662 publications in English and a considerable increase in publications as per years were found. The top author named Fourie I was found with 106 citations and 22 articles started in 2001. Similarly, the University of Illinois found on top organisations out of 2609, United States on top out of 113 countries and information literacy as a keyword out of 6179. Furthermore, the Journal of Academic Librarianship placed at top of sources out of 726 and the National Institutes of Health NIH USA as a top funding agency.