The Concept of Knowledge Organization in Brazilian Journals of Information Science

Abstract

The absence of conceptual and terminological accuracy in the transfer of information between researchers may lead to ambiguous interpretations by actors in different communication contexts. Based on this observation, this paper aims to verify the use of the term Knowledge Organization (KO) and its corresponding meaning in a formal communication channel among experts in Brazilian scientific journals of Information Science (IS). The choice for the analysis of this term influences the importance of KO area in the field of IS. From the concept of Knowledge Organization proposed by Bräscher and Café (2010), the objective of this research is to conduct a conceptual study on this term in the field of IS, and verify the conformity of the authors of this area with the attributes given to the guiding concept.

The survey was conducted through national scientific journals of Information Science, classified in 2012 as A1 and A2 in the Qualis Capes system. The search of the term Knowledge Organization in the “title” and “keywords” fields was carried out in the Referential Database of Articles on Information Science (BRAPCI). 21 articles were retrieved, 20 of which were considered as analysis corpora. In the retrieved articles, convergences with the guiding concept were analyzed. The results show that 60% of the articles present full conformity with the adopted concept and that 70% conform to at least one of the attributes of the guiding concept.