Research Issues in the Archival Field in Turkey: Content Analysis of the Articles Published in The Journal of Archive World


Güler C., Keskin İ.

Bilgi ve Belge Araştırmaları Dergisi, no.13, pp.1-31, 2020 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Publication Date: 2020
  • Journal Name: Bilgi ve Belge Araştırmaları Dergisi
  • Journal Indexes: Asos İndeks
  • Page Numbers: pp.1-31
  • Istanbul University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Arşiv Dünyası (AD) has been published since 1999. AD was published a total of 17 times between 1999 and 2014. AD became a refereed journal in 2008. As a national refereed journal, the journal titled AD has been published electronically since 2017. In this research, the contents of articles in 17 journals published between 1999-2014 have been analyzed. The new period starting in 2018 is excluded from the scope of the research. In the analysis, content evaluation is carried out within the framework of the type of the articles, page number, article topics, method used, data collection technique, Turkish / English abstract, annotation / bibliography and information about to which institutions the authors contribute. In this research, the rate of non-refereed articles is 32.99%, while the rate of refereed articles is 24.49%. 1189 pages were published in the journal between 1999-2014. 636 (53.49%) of these were published before it became refereed, 553 (46.50%) after. 52.07% of the subjects of the articles published in AD are related to the history of science, while 47.93% of the relevant articles are related to archival and archival issues (the subjects matched with archival journal literature from several of the leading journals in the field, such as the American Archivist, Archivaria, Archives and Manuscripts, Journal of the Society of Archivists and Archival Science). If we look through the methods used in this study, descriptive methods (33.19%) and content analysis (27.73%) come to the forefront. As the data collection technique, content analysis (29.83%) and various other techniques (24.79%) such as previously collected data, observation, historical resource analysis, and thinking aloud were used. The percentage of articles having abstracts in Turkish and English is 11.64%, while the percentage of articles not having abstracts in Turkish and English is 85.71%. The percentage of articles having only abstracts in Turkish is 2.65%. The rate of articles not having annotations and bibliographies is 35.11%. The rate of articles having only annotations is 31.91%, while 17.08% of the relevant articles have only bibliographies. The rate of articles having both annotations and bibliographies is 15.96%. Finally, the articles were written by 108 different authors representing 33 institutions both domestic and abroad. The overwhelming majority of the articles were written by a single author. Although researchers affiliated with the departments of information and records management have authored the minority of the articles, they have become far better represented in archival literature. The problems facing AD are also discussed along with some recommendations. Firstly, it is clear that a journal with strong publication principles will increase its reputation in the professional community and scientific publishing field, and this will increase the number of publication demands. Secondly, the editors who were clearly responsible for the implementation of these principles could not properly fulfil their obligations. This seems to cause problems in the journal’s publishing life. Thirdly, there is no doubt that if the journal is indexed in national and international directories, by eliminating the negativities identified in the study, the journal will be given more importance and demand in the professional community. Finally, as the world of scholarly communication changes, professional discourse should be able to change with it.