PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study exploring the emerging field of data science from the library and information science (LIS) perspective.Design/methodology/approachContent analysis of research publications on data science was made of papers published in the Web of Science database to identify the main themes discussed in the publications from the LIS perspective.FindingsA content analysis of 80 publications is presented. The articles belonged to the six broad categories: data science education and training; knowledge and skills of the data professional; the role of libraries and librarians in the data science movement; tools, techniques and applications of data science; data science from the knowledge management perspective; and data science from the perspective of health sciences. The category of tools, techniques and applications of data science was most addressed by the authors, followed by data science from the perspective of health sciences, data science education and training and knowledge and skills of the data professional. However, several publications fell into several categories because these topics were closely related.Research limitations/implicationsOnly publication recorded in the Web of Science database and with the term “data science” in the topic area were analyzed. Therefore, several relevant studies are not discussed in this paper that either were related to other keywords such as “e-science”, “e-research”, “data service”, “data curation”, “research data management” or “scientific data management” or were not present in the Web of Science database.Originality/valueThe paper provides the first exploration by content analysis of the field of data science from the perspective of the LIS.