The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between citations and the research trends of The Research Journal of the Costume Culture (RJCC) using bibliometric and network analyses. The results are as follows. First, the RJCC has been cited by a greater number of journals and high-reputation journals today. The RJCC has been mentioned in global academic journals in various fields, and it has been noted the most in environmental science. Second, because of examining the articles published in the RJCC over the past three years (2019–2021), it was found that the number of topics was evenly distributed in various subfields of the clothing and textiles sector. The RJCC principally deals with traditional clothing, ethics and sustainability, and technology, which means that the RJCC reflects the past, present, and future. As a result of conducting a cluster analysis using the Wakita-Tsurumi algorithm, the subjects of ethical fashion and sustainability were derived from the subdivisions of the RJCC. This suggests that the RJCC is a journal specialized in ethical fashion and sustainability sectors such as environmental, animal, and labor ethics. This study outlined the current status and future direction of academic journals in the field of clothing through an analysis of the RJCC’s influence change and the relationship between citations. In addition, it is academically significant because it identifies research trends and knowledge-structure changes in the apparel science field by identifying changes in research keywords and significant research topics by sector.

Citation frequency is an important factor in evaluating journal quality and is used as a measure of journal impact. The citation index of a paper plays an important role in linking papers with groups of other academic papers, forming a huge and complex network. This study examines the intellectual structure of apparel research through the bibliometric citation analysis of The Research Journal of the Costume Culture (RJCC). In order to analyze the changes in the intellectual structure of the RJCC, we used the Korea Citation Index’s (KCI) data (highly citing journals and highly cited journals). The NodeXL, a social network analysis tool, was used to examine the connection structure between journals. In order to identify the academic influence of the RJCC, we used the KCI journal citation index. Our findings indicate that the RJCC has a high centrality index among the clothing-oriented journals in the same life sciences field. A look at the journals citing the RJCC and the journals cited within the RJCC also showed that more journals of diverse fields have been recently linked through their citations. This suggests that a convergence of interdisciplinary research is underway in the field of clothing. As a result of examining international journals cited in the RJCC, it was confirmed that they were cited in prominent international journals in various fields.