Author cocitation analysis using custom bibliographic databases: a exploratory tool for digging up reference disciplines

Researchers in any academic discipline build on each other's and their own previous work. Definitions, topics and concepts are shared. It is necessary to continuously follow up on interesting lines of inquiry. It is also necessary to identify, examine, and trace the intellectual linkage to each other in a given academic field as a basis of assessing the current state of its field to guide future development. Over the past 80 years, the way we count and analyze the intellectual linkage dramatically changed from the early manual transcribing and statistical computation of citation data to computer-based citation data creation and its manipulation. Most citation and cocitation analyses rely on commercial citation databases such as Social Science Citation Index. This paper introduces an alternative approach to conducting author cocitation analysis (ACA) without relying on commercial citation databases, based on custom bibliographic database and cocitation matrix generation systems specifically developed to use the custom database. The alternative approach overcomes several weaknesses of commercial online data-based ACA research. This guide to an alternative approach to ACA will encourage other researchers to explore the intellectual structures of various MIS fields and guide the future development as well as revealing their reference disciplines.