Abstract

This study analyzes the characteristics of research articles supported by research funding in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) in Korea. Using data from the Korea Citation Index (KCI), a total of 7,456 LIS articles were examined, including 796 funded papers supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea and 6,660 non-funded papers. The analysis focused on annual publication trends, including the number of authors, references, and citations, as well as the distribution of journals, subject areas, and author keywords. The results show that funded papers tend to have more co-authors, include more references, and receive higher citation counts than non-funded papers, while also exhibiting a gradual thematic expansion toward records management and archival studies. Over time, funded research has focused on themes such as information inequality, community-based archiving, and data-driven analysis. In contrast, unfunded papers have continued to focus on traditional topics such as library management, information services, and reading education. These findings suggest that research funding can be an important factor influencing topic selection, research methodology, and the overall structure of scholarly communication. This study also discusses the importance of understanding how research funding affects academic diversity, researcher autonomy, and scholarly communication structures, emphasizing that such understanding is essential for developing policies and institutional and cultural foundations that support the advancement of scholarly communication.