Library and Information Science

Informal communication patterns of engineers who engage in image engineering research—a new-born, rapidly developing field—were investigated. Questionnaire survey, conducted among the researchers in universities and research laboratories in public and private sectors, was followed by interviews to those selected because of their high frequency of communication with various colleagues and functioning as nodes for their groups.

This paper depicted some characteristics of the researchers in the field including: 1) a large, complicated network consisting of 256 engineers in total, and 19 small groups consisting of 2 to 19 engineers, 2) 16 gatekeepers in the large network, 3) gatekeepers playing roles as “node” which trasfer the current information among organizations, 4) three types of gate-keepers identified: “research manager”, “research specialist”, and “theme originator”. It was also found that the gatekeepers occupy the relevant positions to their roles in their affiliated organizations.