Disciplinary, national, and departmental contributions to the literature of library and information science, 2007–2012

Abstract

We investigate the contributions of particular disciplines, countries, and academic departments to the literature of library and information science (LIS) using data for the articles published in 31 journals from 2007 to 2012. In particular, we examine the contributions of authors outside the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada; faculty in departments other than LIS; and practicing librarians. Worldwide, faculty in LIS departments account for 31% of the journal literature; librarians, 23%; computer science faculty, 10%; and management faculty, 10%. The top contributing nations are the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, China, Canada, and Taiwan. Within the United States and the United Kingdom, the current productivity of LIS departments is correlated with past productivity and with other measures of reputation and performance. More generally, the distribution of contributions is highly skewed. In the United States, five departments account for 27% of the articles contributed by LIS faculty; in the United Kingdom, four departments account for nearly twothirds of the articles. This skewed distribution reinforces the possibility that high-status departments may gain a permanent advantage in the competition for students, faculty, journal space, and research funding. At the same time, concentrations of research-active faculty in particular departments may generate beneficial spillover effects.

Survival analysis of author keywords: An application to the library and information sciences area

“…In his work, based on an analysis of citations, he showed that the discipline that contributed most citations to the LIS area was "Computer sciences," followed by "Communication," "Education," and "Management sciences." In our case, of the 10 most productive keywords, we have been able to confirm that "Computer sciences" is the area with the most influence (Walters & Wilder, 2016). This is to be expected, because the predominance of the "digital phenomenon" has reached all fields of knowledge, including the LIS area.…”

The academic–practitioner gap in Spanish library and information science: An analysis of authorship and collaboration in two leading national publications

“…In the light of these data, can we argue that EPI, a journal which explicitly carries the word "professional" in its name, is no longer a practice-oriented journal? Walters and Wilder (2016) establish a quantitative indicator to make this determination, which defines such publications as those to which librarians contribute at least 1.5 times the number of articles submitted by any other group of authors…”

“…Finally, we refer to a significant volume of works that conduct in-depth analysis of authorship in LIS publications (Finlay et al 2013;Joswick, 1999;Schlögl and Stock, 2008;Walters and Wilder, 2016). The degree of collaboration revealed by co-authored papers and the coexistence of works from both communities in certain publications are good general indicators of the healthy relationship between academia and the professional world.…”

“…Consequently, we have applied the criterion used by Walters and Wilder (2016), thus enabling our results to be compared to their recent international study. 3 In the case of EPI, from its complete digital version available at http://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/EPI/issue/archive, also available with a three-year embargo at http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/contenidos.html.…”

Publication and citation patterns of Korean LIS research by subject areas

“…More recently, Walters and Wider (2015) analyzed the contributions of institutions, disciplines, and countries to LIS research based on the papers published in 31 LIS journals from 2007 to 2012. After categorizing authors into the nine groups (Librarian, LIS, Computer Science, Management, Communication, Other Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Other Fields, Non-Academic) and journals into the six types (LIS Core, Practice-oriented, Information Processing & Management, Management-oriented, Informetrics, other), Walters and Wider cross-tabulated papers by author and journal categories and then ranked the disciplines, countries, and departments using the publication count.…”