-
Publish or Practice? An Examination of Librarians’ Contributions to Research
- portal: Libraries and the Academy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 13, Number 4, October 2013
- pp. 403-421
- 10.1353/pla.2013.0038
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
This article examines authorship of LIS literature in the context of practitioner and non-practitioner production of published research. For this study, 4,827 peer-reviewed articles from twenty LIS journals published between 1956 and 2011 were examined to determine the percentage of articles written by practitioners. The study identified a decrease in the proportion of articles authored by practitioners between 2006 and 2011. Topic analysis of articles revealed subtle yet distinct differences in research subject matter between practitioner-authored and non-practitioner-authored articles. If present trends continue, the character of LIS literature may shift away from many issues relating to practical librarianship.