JDIS focuses on the scientific research as a social institution, its internal operational mechanisms, and its relationship with other social factors. It primarily focuses on universal issues in various countries/regions and disciplinary fields, such as funding strategies, international collaboration models, scientist career paths, trends in talent mobility, laws of disciplinary evolution, academic communication paradigms, research evaluation systems, technology transfer, research integrity construction, and interactions between the scientific community and other social systems.

In particular, JDIS puts special emphasis on research articles that aim to design, test, verify, or compare new theories, methods, or tools, in analysis of research profiles or developments. It requires that submitted manuscripts go far beyond merely statistically scientometric analysis using established methods and tools. 

Specific topic areas may include (but are not limited to):

• Knowledge organization
• Knowledge discovery and data mining
• Knowledge integration and fusion
• Semantic Web
• Science of science
• Bibliometrics and scientometrics
• Analytic and diagnostic informetrics
• Competitive intelligence
• Predictive analysis
• Social network analysis and metrics
• Semantic and interactively analytic retrieval
• Evidence-based policy analysis
• Intelligent knowledge production
• Knowledge-driven workflow management and decision-making
• Knowledge-driven collaboration and its management
• Domain knowledge infrastructure with knowledge fusion and analytics
• Training for data & information scientists
• Development of data and information services