College and Research Libraries Authorship in College & Research Libraries Revisited: Gender, Institutional Affiliation, Collaboration James L. Terry This article updates earlier studies by Gloria Cline and Paul Metz on the characteristics of authorship of articles published in College & Research Libraries, focusing on gender, institutional affiliation, and extent of col- laboration. Between 1989 and 1994, representation by academic librar- ians and authors affiliated with library schools increased, collaboration became predominate, and for the first time the number of primary women authors equaled that of men. Considering all coauthors, female authors outnumbered men. The largest proportion of authors were women aca- demic librarians wtio coauthored articles. Women, however, were underrepresented among authors affiliated with library schools and among academic administrators. [I] n the fortieth anniversary of College & Research Libraries (C&RL), Gloria Cline exam- ined various characteristics of articles published in journal volumes 1 through 39 (1939-79), as well as charac- teristics of the citations from those ar- ticles.1 Among the various characteristics of C& RL articles she examined were the author's sex, institutional affiliation, and extent of collaboration as measured by coauthorship. Cline presented the data in five-year intervals to detail changes and trends in publication and to compensate for anomalies from year to year. Ten years later, on the fiftieth anniver- sary of C&RL, Paul Metz selectively up- dated Cline's work, examining the above- mentioned variables and the extent of quantitative methodologies used in articles published in volumes 40 through 49 (1980- 88.)2 One of the most significant findings in Metz' s study was the dramatic increase in the representation of women authors in C& RL since 1979. In the journal's first forty years of publication, male authors consis- tently averaged around 80 percent. Be- tween 1980 and 1984, the percentage dropped to 65, and between 1985 and 1988, to 56 percent. Metz predicted that if the trend continued, within the next five-year period a balance in the gender of authors should be reached. Overlapping and ex- tending Metz' s data, Peter Hernon and Mary Bailey Croxen report that between 1980 and 1991, 53 percent of articles ac- James L. Terry is a Social Sciences Reference Librarian at New York University's Bobst Library; e-mail: terryj@elmerl.bobst.nyu.edu. 377 378 College & Research Libraries cepted for publication in C&RL were au- thored by men. 3 Although no anniversary is in the off- ing, the next five-year period has passed since Metz presented his data. This study will provide an update to Cline and Metz's evaluation of authorship in C&RL, focusing on gender, institutional affilia- tion, and collaboration for the years 1989-94. Gender Studies of Authorship A number of studies have examined gen- der differences in library publishing. The methods employed and the particular populations studied have varied, making direct comparisons difficult. Neverthe- less, the studies reveal broad trends and relevant variables that help explain gen- der differences. Several studies examined gender dif- ferences in publication productivity among library administrators and edu- cators. In a study of publications by aca- Although male authors were still predominate, accounting for 56.3 percent of all articles published, in two of the journals women authors were actually in the majority. demic administrators (in ARL institu- tions) between 1975 and 1980, Betty Jo Irvine discovered that men were signifi- cantly more likely than women to have one or more publications. 4 She also re- ported that women administrators were significantly more likely to publish than the general population of women librar- ians. Christine A. Korytnyk's study of li- brary school faculty publications in the 1970s, and Jana Varlejs and Prudence Dalrymple's 1983 study reported similar findings. 5 But in her study of library school faculty publications between 1980 and 1984, Kathleen Garland presented evidence that problematized the pattern of male dominance. 6 Men had more total publications during the four-year pe- riod-1,659 compared to 1,273 for July 1996 women. But when Garland weighted the type of publications (i.e., monographs given higher weight than journal articles), the mean weighted scores for women were greater-.783 compared to .649 for men. In addition, 42 percent of the men in the sample had no publications, whereas only 40 percent of the women were unpublished. A second set of studies examined the characteristics of authorship of particu- lar library journals. John and Jane Olsgaard' s study of five major library sci- ence journals in the 1970s revealed that men were more highly represented than women in each of the journals.7 Martha C. Adamson and Gloria J. Zamora ap- plied the Olsgaards' methodology to an examination of authorship in five journals of interest to special librarians during the 1970s.8 Although male authors were still predominate, accounting for 56.3 percent of all articles published, in two of the jour- nals women authors were actually in the majority. Women authors contributed 56.9 percent of the articles in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association and 59.3 per- cent of the articles in Online Review. Thus, the particular type of library journal' ap- pears to make a difference. Lois Buttlar' s study of sixteen journals, from January 1987 through June 1989, representing the wide range of library types and interests, supports Adamson and Zamora's findings and provides some points of comparison for examin- ing C&RL. 9 The majority (52.17%) of the total authors were women. Equally significant was the wide range of differential publication by gender among the different journals. For ex- ample, more than 75 percent of the au- thors of articles in Libraries & Culture were men, whereas more than 78 percent of the authors in the School Library Media Quat- terly were women. 10 By way of compari- son, the study reported that 45.5 percent of the authors in C&RL were women. Buttlar also found that academic librar- ians published more than 6_1 percent of TABLE1 Gender of Primary Authors, 1939-1979 Date Male Female 1939-44 78% 22% 1945-49 77 23 1950-54 78 22 1955-59 87 13 1960-64 85 15 1965-69 77 23 1970-74 80 20 1975-79 79 21 1980-84 65 35 1985-88 56 44 1989-94 50 50 all articles, and only 21.8 percent were published by authors affiliated with li- brary schools. Single authors produced a little more than 60 percent of the articles. In addition, among academic librarian authors, top administrators were by far the most prolific occupational category. Methods In their methodology, Cline and Metz col- lected data only on bona fide articles. The authors excluded editorials, news items, and book reviews or review essays. For each article, they recorded the primary author's gender and institutional affilia- tion. They categorized institutional affili- ation by the following types: academic libraries, other (nonlibrary), library schools, government libraries, special li- braries, public libraries, and library as- sociations. For collaborative works, they documented the number of coauthors. The researchers cumulated the data in five-year intervals and presented them in frequency tables indicating trends in au- thorship by gender, institutional affilia- tion (type), and extent of collaborative authorship. In this report, for compara- tive purposes, data will be presented in tabular form which will include figures from Cline's study (1939-79), Metz's study (1980-88), and this study (1989-94). Authorship in C&RL Revisited 379 To examine more closely the nature of authorship, cross-tabulations are made of gender with institutional affiliation, col- laboration, and academic administrators. In addition, total counts are made of all authors (single authors and coauthors). Cline and Metz assumed that the first- named, or primary, author is the major contributor to a coauthored article and, therefore, "secondary" authors are not represented in the data collected for gen- der and institutional affiliation. However, there is no reason to make this assump- tion. The ordering of names of coauthors may be alphabetical, based on relative prestige of the contributors, or may even be arbitrary. There is a considerable body of literature that addresses the issues of multiple authorship and collaboration in the publication of scholarly works. 11 However, there appears to be no consen- sus on how to count or assign credit rela- tive to name order. Normative standards for name ordering vary across disciplines. The American Psychological Association, for example, explicitly states that multiple authors in psychology publications should be ordered according to the de- gree of contribution to the publication. Mathematicians, statisticians, and physi- cists prefer alphabetical name order. Be- cause there are no clear norms in the field of librarianship, disregarding coauthors misrepresents the extent and nature of authorship. This is particularly the case given the increasing proportion of coau- thored as opposed to single-authored ar- ticles found across disciplines. 12 A final note of caution is in order re- garding data collection. Although the TABLE2 Total Authors ·by Gender, 1989-94 Total 381 Male 182 (47.8%) Female 197 (51.7%) Note: The gender of 2 authors (.5% of total) was indeterminate. 380 College & Research Libraries July 1996 TABLE3 Table 2 presents the gen- Type of Institution of Primary Author der of the total number of authors, including single and coauthors, who pub- lished articles between 1989 and 1994. Of the 381 total au- thors, 197 (51.7%) were women. Even if the two (.5%) authors of indetermi- nate gender were added to the men's column, women authors would still outnum- 1939-79 1980-88 Academic Libraries 58.70% 56.12% Other (nonlibrary) 11.27 17.29 Library Schools 8.56 10.11 Government Libraries 6.25 0.27 Special Libraries 3.38 6.38 Public Libraries 3.16 1.06 Library Associations 1.41 1.33 type of institutional affiliation of authors was relatively clear, the determination as to whether the author was an upper-level administrator was not. The position des- ignations used in this study were univer- sity .librarian, director or dean, and asso- ciate or assistant to these positions. Be- cause nomenclature of job titles varies among academic institutions, the deter- mination of "administrator" did require judgment in some cases and is thus sub- ject to possible error. Gender Table 1 presents the combined data on the gender of primary authors from Cline (1939-79), Metz (1980-88), and this study (1989-94). Between 1989 and 1994,242 ar- ticles. were published in C&RL. Of that total, exactly half of the authors were men and half were women. For the first time in the journal's history, women were equally represented as primary authors. 1989-94 69.40% 8.3 18.1 1.2 1.2 0.8 0.8 ber men. Although the differences are not statistically significant, the data do indi- cate that the trend toward increased rep- resentation of women authors in C&RL continues. Institutional Affiliation Table 3, following Cline and Metz, pre- sents data on the type of institutional af- filiation of the primary authors. Academic librarians, as one might expect, have been consistently well represented in author- ship in C&RL. However, since 1988, their proportion has increased nearly 14 per- cent. Similarly, authors affiliated with li- brary schools increased nearly 8 percent. Between 1989 and 1994, academic librar- ians and library educators together ac- counted for 88 percent of all the published authors. Table 4 details institutional affiliation by gender for both primary authors and total authors for the two major types of TABLE4 Authorship by Institutional Affiliation and Gender, 1989-94 Primm Author All Authors Male Female Total Male Female Total Academic 80 88 168 123 146 269 (48%) (52%) (46%) (54%) Library School 25 19 44 31 25 55 (57%) (43%) (55%) (45%) All Instit. 121 121 242 182 197 381 (50%) (50%) (47.8%) (51.7%) Note: Of "All Authors," the gender of 2 (.5%) was indeterminate. TABLES Single Authorship, 1939-1994 Articles with Time Period No Coauthors 1939-44 95.7% 1945-49 95.6 1950-54 93.5 1955-59 92.7 1960--64 94.0 1965-69 85.9 1970-74 79.1 1975-79 72.7 1980-84 68 .1 1985-88 54.1 1989-94 40.5 institutions-academic librarians and li- brary schools-for the 1989-94 period. Whether considering primary authors or total authors, men continue to be more highly represented among authors from library schools. However, the situation is reversed for authors from academic li- braries. The largest number and propor- tion of total authors are women academic librarians. Collaboration (Coauthorship) Table 5, following Cline and Metz, presents data on the extent of collaborative author- ship. In order to be consistent with Cline and Metz's data presentation, the table presents the percentage of single author- ship. As indicated earlier, the clear trend towar<;J coauthorship continues in the 1989-94 period. This is consistent with publication trends in various disciplines.13 TABLE6 Authorship in C&RL Revisited 381 Table 6 details coauthorship by gender. More than half of all the coauthored ar- ticles were mixed in terms of gender. In other words, both men and women col- laborated in producing the articles. Inter- estingly, 26 percent of the coauthored ar- ticles had only women collaborators, compared to 17 percent that were solely male collaborations. A far larger propor- tion of total collaborators were women- 55 percent compared to 44 percent. The collaboration of women authors tips the balance in terms of the overall represen- tation of women authors in C&RL. More than 67 percent of women authors col- laborated in the production of articles. Academic Administrators Finally, table 7 presents gender differ- ences in publishing by academic admin- TABLE7 Gender of Academic Library Administrators, 1989-94 Total 72 Male 44 (61%) Female 28 (39%) istrators in C&RL during the 1989-94 pe- riod. It is commonly assumed that admin- istrators, because they have more re- sources available to pursue publishing and because publishing is more likely to be expected of them, would tend to pub- lish more than other academic librarians. Also, the fact that women have made significant inroads into top academic positions might help Total Coauthors by Gender, 1989-94 explain the increase in women academic au- thors.14 As mentioned Coauthored Articles Coauthors earlier, Irvine's and Male Female Mixed Total Male Female Total Buttlar's findings tend Only Only to support this. Nei- 17 25 55 98 108 133 243 ther case, however, is (17%) (26%) (56%) (44%) (55%) supported by the data Note: The gender of 2 coauthors (1 %) could not be determined. from this study. Of the total academic authors 382 College & Research Libraries in this study, only 27 percent were top administrators, with men comprising 6l percent of these authors. Discussion The trend toward increasing representa- tion of women authors in C&RL which Metz observed between 1980 and 1988 continued in the subsequent six-year pe- riod. For the first time, between 1989 and 1994, the number of primary women au- thors equaled that of men and the total of women authors outnumbered men. Con- sidering the total population of women Women tend to be more heavily represented in, for example, journals specializing in library education or schoollibrarianship. librarians (88% of all librarians), obvi- ously women authors are still consider- ably underrepresented. 15 But from an his- torical perspective, the increasing number of women who have published in C&RL is nothing short of dramatic. Other studies have shown that gender differences in publication vary according to the particular subject area of the jour- nal. Women tend to be more heavily rep- resented in, for example, journals special- izing in library education or schoolli- brarianship. Yet, there is evidence of a general increase in women authors across the range of library journals. In Buttlar's study of sixteen journals between 1987 and 1988, four of the titles matched those July 1996 in the Osgaard study of the 1970s. In each journal, the proportion of women in- creased, ranging from 11 to 18 percent. Authorship in C&RL is clearly part of a general trend. The major difference be- tween men and women authors in this study was the higher incidence of collabo- ration among women. And, somewhat surprisingly, women academic adminis- trators were considerably underrepre- sented. The obvious question not addressed in this study is: Why the change? Are de- mographic or organizational variables ex- planatory? Did the feminist movement, which exhorted women to be more in- volved in publishing and aspire to man- agement, affect a change in motivation?16 Mary Biggs's review of the literature of publishing by women academics in gen- eral revealed that women publish less be- cause they "tend to cluster in the more teaching-oriented, less research-oriented schools and in the disciplines or interdis- ciplinary specialties least productive of publication." 17 Biggs suggests that this may be true of library school faculty, and by extension, academic librarians. Is this pattern true of women librarians? Is it changing? What is the significance of the higher incidence of collaboration among women authors found in this study? The literature is generally silent on these ques- tions. However, the trends in authorship are becoming increasingly clear. Research now is needed to go beyond description to determine the explanatory variables re- lated to these trends. Notes 1. Gloria S. Cline, "College & Research Libraries: Its First Forty Years," College & Research Librar- ies 43 (May 1982): 208-32. 2. Paul Metz, "A Statistical Profile of College & Research Libraries," College & Research Libraries 50 (Jan. 1988): 42-47. 3. Peter Hernon and Mary Bailey Croxen, "Publication in College & Research Libraries: Ac- cepted, Rejected, and Published Papers, 1980-1991," College & Research Libraries 54 (July 1993): 303-21. 4. Betty Jo Irvine, Sex Segregation in Librarianship: Demographic and Career Patterns of A~ademic Library Administrators (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr., 1985), 129-34. 5. Christine A. Korytnyk, "A Comparison of the Publishing Patterns between Men and Women Ph.D .'s in Librarianship," Library Quarterly 58 (Jan. 1988): 52-65; Jana Varlejs and Prudence Authorship in C&RL Revisited 383 Dalrymple, "Publication Output of Library and Information Science Faculty," Journal of Educa- tion for Library & Information Science 27 (fall1986): 71-89. 6. Kathleen Garland, "Gender Differences in Scholarly Publications among Faculty in ALA Accredited Library Schools," Library & Information Science Research 12 (Apr./June 1990): 155-66. 7. John N. Olsgaard and Jane Kinch Olsgaard, "Authorship in Five Library Periodicals," Col- lege & Research Libraries 41 (Jan. 1980): 49-53. 8. Martha C. Adamson and Gloria J. Zamora, "Publishing in Library Science Journals: A Test of the Olsgaard Profil~" College & Research Libraries 42 (May 1981): 23~2. 9. Lois Buttlar, "Analyzing the Library Periodical Literature: Content and Authorship," Col- lege & Research Libraries 52 (Jan. 1991): 38--53. 10. Ibid., 41. 11. Martha A. Harsanyi, "Multiple Authors, Multiple Problems-Bibliometrics and the Study of Scholarly Collaboration: A Literature Review," Library & Information Science Research 15 (fall 1993): 325-54. 12. Ibid., 326. 13. Ibid . 14. Among ARL institutions, for example, the percentage of women top administrators in- creased from 48.7 in 1989 to 50.2 in 1994. See Association of Research Libraries, ARL Annual Salary Survey 1989 (Washington, D.C.: ARL, 1990), 36; Association of Research Libraries, ARL Annual Salary Survey 1994 (Washington, D.C.: ARL, 1995), 34. 15. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1994 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1994), 407. 16. See, for example, Darlene E. Weingang, ed., Women and Library Management: Theories, Skills and Values (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pierian Pr., 1982). 17. Mary Biggs, "The Scholarly Vocation and Library Science," Advances in Librarianship 15 (1991): 39. ACRL University library Statistics, 1994-95 Library Research Center, Graduate School of Library & Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, comp. Data from more than 100 participating libraries. 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