• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.251-272
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• 2019

This study investigated the utilization and interrelatedness of Scopus subject categories. To conduct this study, major and minor subject categories of journals listed in the 2017 Scopus index were used. The results showed varying degrees of interrelatedness of subject categories. At the major subject category level, the utilization was the highest in Medicine, while Social Sciences showed a greater degree of interrelatedness in comparison to Medicine. Yet, at the minor subject level, 2700 General Medicine was particularly dominant in terms of utilization and interrelatedness. Moreover, co-occurrences of minor subject categories showed varying degrees of interrelatedness between pairs of minor subject categories. Pairs of minor subject categories showed the following characteristics: a) two subject categories having identical or closely identical descriptions, b) two different categories having an interrelationship by subject areas, and c) one category conceptually encompassing another category. Due to varying degrees of utilization and interrelatedness among subject categories, minor subject categories that may greatly influence the major subject categories in conducting research studies should be investigated in detail.