LOYALTY OR REJECTION?

PERSISTENCE AND DISPERSION OF AUTHORS ACROSS WORKING GROUPS AT THE NATIONAL MEETING OF RESEARCH IN INFORMATION SCIENCE (2005-2025)

Abstract

Scientific production in Information Science is organized into different Working Groups of the National Meeting for Research in Information Science (ENANCIB), providing a space in which authors can present studies in different thematic areas throughout their participation in the event. This study analyzes the distribution, persistence, and mobility of authors across ENANCIB Working Groups from 2005 to 2025. It seeks to identify patterns of productivity, concentration of authorship, authors’ persistence within Working Groups, and movements across different groups over the event’s editions. This is a descriptive and exploratory study with a quantitative approach, based on records of papers published in the ENANCIB proceedings and made available through BENANCIB. A total of 7,030 papers and 5,096 distinct authors were analyzed, considering the distribution of scientific production, authors’ participation in Working Groups, and their trajectories across the event’s editions. The results indicate a high concentration of scientific production among a small proportion of authors, with a distribution pattern similar to that predicted by Lotka’s Law. The results also show a predominance of authors with occasional participation or participation restricted to a small number of papers, while a smaller group demonstrated high productivity. Regarding participation in the Working Groups, the results reveal the coexistence of persistence within particular groups and mobility across different Working Groups, including cases of participation in more than one group in the same edition. The findings contribute to understanding the dynamics of authors’ participation across the different thematic spaces of ENANCIB and distinguish mobility, persistence, and diversity of participation.