weller.p65 352 College & Research Libraries July 1999 Publication Patterns of U.S. Academic Librarians from 1993 to 1997 Ann C. Weller, Julie M. Hurd, and Stephen E. Wiberley Jr. This study examined the contribution to the peer-reviewed literature of library and information science by practicing academic librarians in the United States. Data on authors were obtained from articles published from 1993 to 1997 in thirty-two journals. Of 3,624 peer-reviewed articles in these journals, 1,579 (43.6%) were authored by at least one practicing academic librarian. These librarians represented 386 institutions of higher educa­ tion. This study provides benchmark data for publication productivity of academic librarians and identifies a core list of peer-reviewed journals for them. Approximately six percent of these librarians wrote three or more articles in the five-year period. In nineteen journals one-third or more of the articles were authored by academic librarians. Libraries from Research I universities that were members of the Association for Research Libraries were the most productive. The contribution of practicing academic librar­ ians to the literature of their field is significant. he literature on publication pat­ terns in library and information science (LIS) usually focuses ei­ ther faculty in LIS schools or practicing academic librarians. Both groups have made significant contributions to scholarship within their discipline. Both groups come from an environment that val­ ues research and publication, but each tends to bring a different perspective. Practitio­ ners can make important contributions to the scholarly publications in a practice- based discipline. The degree to which prac­ ticing librarians contribute to the knowledge base of LIS is the focus of this investigation. To examine this question, the present study analyzed academic librarians’ contributions to the peer-reviewed literature, documented their publication patterns, and compared these patterns with findings of earlier stud­ ies of publication patterns by academic li­ brarians and LIS faculty. Two recent studies have reviewed pub­ lication patterns of LIS faculty. Karen E. Ann C. Weller is Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Library of the Health Sciences, in the Univer­ sity Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago; e-mail: acw@uic.edu. Julie M. Hurd is Associate Professor and Science Librarian in the University Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago; e-mail: jhurd@uic.edu. Stephen E. Wiberley Jr. is Professor and Bibliographer for the Social Sciences in the Uni­ versity Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago; e-mail: wiberley@uic.edu. The authors sincerely appreciate the advice of their colleagues who regularly attend the “research brown bag” in the university library and contributed to the discussions on the design and analysis of this study. They also thank Bar­ bara J. Via for sharing the original list of journals she used in her study of editors. Her article listed only the names of the journals whose editors had responded to her survey. 352 mailto:wiberley@uic.edu mailto:jhurd@uic.edu mailto:acw@uic.edu Publication Patterns of U.S. Academic Librarians 353 Pettigrew and Paul T. Nicholls studied LIS faculty in the United States during an eleven-year period (1982–1992).1 Their author-based study provided data on mean productivity per faculty member. They used the Directory of the Association for Library and Information Science Educa­ tion, 1992–93 to obtain names of all full- time faculty at the assistant, associate, and full professor levels. Each of the 607 names of faculty members was searched on five databases, retrieving a total of 7,937 publications. They found that fac­ ulty productivity appears to be influenced by the presence of doctoral programs, with publication output higher in schools with Ph.D. programs than in schools lim­ ited to master ’s programs. LIS faculty in Ph.D. institutions published a mean of 4.58 articles in refereed journals in the eleven-year period, whereas LIS faculty in institutions with master ’s degrees pub­ lished a mean of 2.85 articles in refereed journals. The average number of pub­ lished articles for this time period was 10.55 and 5.97, respectively, when nonrefereed as well as refereed articles were included. However, these differ­ ences became less pronounced when data from only Research I institutions were compared. Pettigrew and Nicholls found that LIS faculty from Research I institu­ tions with Ph.D. programs published an average of 5.0 articles in refereed journals versus 4.6 articles in those Research I in­ stitutions with only master ’s programs. Marcia J. Bates used a slightly different approach in a study of publications of LIS faculty.2 She compared publication patterns of senior LIS faculty from four LIS schools (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and UCLA) that “consistently rated high” in several measures of assessment.3 She found that senior LIS fac­ ulty in these four schools published a mean of between 6.3 and 8.0 journal articles, book chapters, and articles in conference proceed­ ings from 1984 through 1991. These data did not separate peer-reviewed articles. Bates was hesitant to compare her data with other stud­ ies that grouped all publication types together, a practice she claimed “may obscure real dif­ ferences between schools.”4 Several studies have investigated the authoring patterns of practicing academic librarians. Two similar studies published in 1985 examined the institutional affilia­ tion of authors. Sylvia C. Krausse and Janice F. Sieburth conducted a study of LIS publication patterns based on articles in twelve LIS journals.5 Between 1973 and 1982, practicing academic librarians authored a steadily increasing percentage of published articles in the field, from 28.2 percent in 1973 to 42.3 percent in 1982 .6 Krausse and Sieburth also found that the most prolific authors came from institu­ tions with library holdings of more than one million volumes.7 The same year, Paula Watson published a study that compared authoring patterns of librarians in eleven major journals be­ tween 1979 and 1983.8 She found that 44.2 percent of authors came from academic li­ braries, and 20.9 percent came from LIS faculty and students.9 Watson did not dif­ ferentiate data by year so it was not pos­ sible to determine whether the ratio of publications between LIS faculty and prac­ ticing academic librarians remained con­ stant during the time period for the jour­ nals she studied. There was an overlap of eight journal titles in the Krausse and Sieburth, and Watson studies. Krausse and Sieburth’s twelve titles came from LIS titles included in Social Science Index, whereas Watson selected LIS titles that were among the “best-known and most well-estab­ lished journals in the field.”10 In 1990, John M. Budd and Charles A. Seavey published the results of their study on the authorship patterns of aca­ demic librarians in thirty-six library sci­ ence journals over a five-year period (1983–1987).11 Most individuals (90.7%) authored only one contribution, as either a single author or a coauthor. The articles came from 384 institutions, just over one- third (34.9%) of which were represented only once during the five year period. Budd and Seavey also found that of the twenty institutions whose librarians were the most productive, eighteen were cur­ rent members of the Association of Re­ search Libraries (ARL). They pointed out http:1983�1987).11 354 College & Research Libraries July 1999 that the large libraries had “the benefit of numbers; their staff sizes are consider­ able. They also have broader and deeper resources—bigger collections … [and] … a research impetus on the campus.”12 As authors of nearly one-half of the articles published in journals studied, academic librarians make important con­ tributions to the LIS literature. There have been no comparable recent studies. Sev­ eral questions emerge: Do academic li­ brarians continue to provide a significant proportion of articles in the peer-re­ viewed literature? What are productivity benchmarks for practicing academic li­ brarians? What is the frequency of sole authorship and coauthorship for aca­ demic librarians? Do practicing academic librarians’ who recently published come from institutions of higher education that have large collections, are Research I in­ stitutions, or are members of ARL? Methodology Selection of Peer-Reviewed LIS Journals This study focused on the peer-reviewed LIS journal article. Generally, journals are the publication of choice for practicing academic librarians. Identifying an appro­ priate list of journals was the initial chal­ lenge. Budd and Seavey developed their own list of LIS journal titles to investi­ gate.13 Mary T. Kim studied citation analy­ sis using a core list of LIS titles.14 A study by Barbara Via provided another list of LIS titles.15 She surveyed editors of sixty- eight LIS journals to determine their edi­ torial peer review process. Budd and Seavey began their list with a combination of the twelve titles used by Krausse and Sieburth and the eleven titles identified by Watson.16–17 They then added other titles of “special interest” to produce a list of thirty-six LIS journal titles.18 Kim expanded a list of thirty-one titles that David F. Kohl and Charles H. Davis developed in 1982.19–20 She added titles that were (1) listed as both citing and cited LIS source journals in the Journal Citation Report, (2) published by the ALA, or (3) referenced by journals in the origi­ nal set of thirty-one titles. Her final list included fifty-two journal titles. Via built her list from the lists developed by Daniel O’Connor and Phyllis Van Orden and by Budd and Seavey.21–23 O’Connor and Van Orden’s original list used thirty LIS titles that “accept contributions from members of the field and were indexed in Library Literature,” and eliminated journals that solely published solicited articles.24 Material published with symposia, conferences, and theme issues are chosen for a variety of reasons. The variety of ways that Budd and Seavey, Kim, and Via developed their lists indicates both the difficulty of identify­ ing an appropriate list of journals and the somewhat subjective dimension of the process. Among these three lists were 103 different LIS titles. To compensate for a possible bias in any one list, this study used as a starting point those journals that appeared on at least two of these three lists. Forty-two titles met this criterion. Because the investigators were inter­ ested in publication patterns of academic librarians in U.S. libraries, journals pub­ lished outside North America were elimi­ nated from consideration. Because this study was interested in the scholarly lit­ erature of the field, the investigators sought to identify the peer-reviewed journals from the remaining list of forty-two titles. The ‘instructions to authors’ sections of jour­ nals, which usually included information on the journal’s review process, were ex­ amined for each title. If the instructions did not state explicitly that the journal’s articles were peer-reviewed, the investigators con­ tacted the editor to determine whether they were. The final list comprised thirty-two currently published, peer-reviewed LIS journal titles produced in the United States and Canada (see table 1). Identification of Peer-Reviewed Articles Not all the material published in a peer- reviewed journal undergoes a formal re­ view process. Typically, only articles are peer-reviewed. Journals contain a vari­ ety of other types of material. Thomas E. http:articles.24 http:titles.18 http:titles.15 http:titles.14 Publication Patterns of U.S. Academic Librarians 355 Nisonger found that over a twenty-year period, only 54.2 percent of the authored items in the journal Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory were bona fide ar­ ticles.25 In her study, Watson excluded “books, chapters in books, reports, and articles in more specialized journals.”26 Krausse and Sieburth excluded “book re­ views, news reports, columns, editorials, etc.” from their study.27 Budd and Seavey also excluded “editorials, book reviews, columns, and responses” to ensure that only full-length articles were included.28 Using criteria similar to those described above, the present study excluded all edi­ torials, introductions, committee reports, letters to the editor, news items, columns or features, obituaries, and book reviews. Even with these exclusions, one cannot as­ sume that the remaining articles in a jour­ nal are peer-reviewed. To ensure that only peer-reviewed articles were included in the data set, symposium and conference pro­ ceedings also were excluded. For that same reason, all “theme” issues that had a guest editor who invited contributions also were TABLE 1 Core List of Refereed Journals in Librarianship (U.S. and Canadian Publications) American Archivist* Bulletin of the Medical Library Association* Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian* College & Research Libraries* Canadian Journal of InformationlCanadian Journal of Library and Information Science Cataloging & Classification Quarterly* Collection Management* Government Information Quarterly Government Publication Review lJournal of Government Information* Information Processing and Management Information Technology & Libraries* Journal of Academic Librarianship* Journal of Education for Librarianship Journal of Information Science Journal of the American Society for Information Science Libraries & Culture Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory* Library and Information Science Research Library Hi-Tech* Library Quarterly Library Resources & Technical Services* Notes: Music Library Association* Online and CD-ROM Review Public Libraries Reference Services Review* Research Strategies* Resource Sharing and Information Networks RQlReference & User Services Quarterly* School Library and Media Quarterly Science & Technology Libraries* Serials Librarian* Technical Services Quarterly* *Journals with 33+ percent U.S. academic librarian authors http:included.28 http:study.27 http:ticles.25 356 College & Research Libraries July 1999 excluded. Material published with sympo­ sia, conferences, and theme issues are cho­ sen for a variety of reasons. Authors are selected because of their subject matter expertise or because they participated in a presentation, symposium, forum, or con­ ference. For whatever reason, these articles are published as part of a group of articles. The experiences of the investigators were that these types of articles often are not peer-reviewed. Excluding such articles may have eliminated some peer-reviewed contributions; however, these criteria pro­ vided one more level of assurance that only peer-reviewed publications were included in the present study. Data Collection To be certain that the data did not repre­ sent an anomaly in publication patterns that might be present within any given year, the study covered a five-year period (1993–1997). Budd and Seavey also exam­ ined data for a five-year period, ten years earlier than the present study, from 1983– 1987. For each issue, the investigators re­ corded the date of publication, the num­ ber of peer-reviewed articles, the number of authors of these articles, the number of these articles authored by at least one aca­ demic librarian, and the number of authors of these articles who were academic librar­ ians. From each peer-reviewed article that was authored by at least one academic li­ brarian, the study noted the academic li­ brarian author’s name, his or her institu­ tional affiliation, and the departmental and institutional affiliation of his or her collabo­ rators. The investigators relied on the in­ stitutional affiliation information from each article to determine whether an author had an academic affiliation and to identify the institution. If the same author listed a dif­ ferent affiliation in separate articles, the names of each institution were recorded. The data set included only articles with authors from U.S. institutions. The investigators entered all data into a spreadsheet program. Some authors were inconsistent, at times using their full first and middle names or other times us­ ing only either one or two initials. The investigators attempted to reconcile vari­ ant forms of author and institutional names; no attempt was made to reconcile name changes. Results The thirty-two journals published 703 is­ sues during the time frame of this study. The investigators did not locate three is­ sues (0.4%) from two titles. Based on the percentage of articles authored by aca­ demic librarians in the other issues of these two titles, this study’s data set probably lacks three to four articles (approximately 0.2%) by academic librarian authors. The thirty-two journals contained 3,624 peer-reviewed articles published between 1993 and 1997. Of these articles 1,579 (43.6%) were authored by at least one aca­ demic librarian. In total numbers, there were 5,477 instances of authorship and 2,032 of these were academic librarians. Of these 2,032 names, 1,515 were unique academic librarian names (see figure 1). Articles authored by academic librarians were not distributed equally among all the titles. Among the thirty-two LIS titles, the percentage of articles authored by at least one academic librarian from a U.S. institu­ tion ranged from 0.0 percent (Canadian Journal of Library and Information Science) through 100.0 percent (Technical Services Quarterly). The nineteen asterisked journals in table 1 are those in which a minimum of one-third of the articles were authored by at least one U.S. academic librarian. In the data set, the highest number of peer-reviewed articles for one author was ten (see table 2). Academic librarians who published three or more articles during this time period comprised 6.07 percent of all those who published. Almost 80 percent of the academic librarians who published in these thirty-two journals were either a single author or a coauthor on only one publication during the five- year time period studied. On average, there were 1.46 authors per article. For individual journal titles, the mean authors per article ranged from 1.02 (Libraries and Culture) to 2.07 (Online and CD-ROM Review). Of articles by academic Publication Patterns of U.S. Academic Librarians 357 FIGURE 1 Basis of Data Analysis for Publication Patterns of U.S. Academic Librarians same campus or across institutional boundaries. Fifty- four (20.8%) of the collaborations were “intra-institutional,” with scholars out­ side the library and from the same cam­ pus, compared to 206 collaborations • 32 refereed journals published in u.s. or Canada, 1993-1997 • 703 journal issues • 3624 articles • 1579 articles with at least one u.s. academic librarian author • 1515 u.s. academic librarian authors from 386 institutions librarians, 869 (55%) were single-authored works (see table 3). The remaining 710 ar­ ticles (45%) had two or more authors. Pa­ pers with three or more authors comprise less than ten percent of the total. The data set was sorted by authors’ in­ stitutional affiliation to produce a ranked list of the total author count per institu­ tion (see table 4). Most of the institutions in table 4 are large research universities where scholarly research and publication are important elements of the institutional culture. In fact, of the top twenty institu­ tions, all but one with the most number of articles published by librarians was a Research I institution or held ARL mem­ bership. Ninety-five percent are ARL li­ braries, and 80 percent are Research I in­ stitutions. The 710 multiple-authored articles included 260 (36.6%) that demonstrated an “extramu­ ral” collaboration, whether across units on the (79.2%) that were “interinstitutional,” with scholars, whether academic librarians or not, from other institu­ tions. Of those intra-institutional collabora­ tions, forty-two were with faculty from other units. Outside collaboration involved other academic librarians for eighty-one articles. Another fifty-three articles included collabo­ ration with nonlibrarian scholars from other schools; thirty-two of these were LIS faculty. Twenty-three articles were coauthored with li­ brarians from other types of libraries, and four were collaborations with students. Forty-five others included co-authors from a variety of institutions, including library vendors, govern­ ment agencies, library associations, and con­ sultants. Because the collaborations sometimes involved individuals from more than one ex­ tramural site, the number totals more than 260. Discussion The discussion covers the productivity of academic librarians compared to the pro- TABLE 2 Productivity of U.S. Academic Librarians from 1993 to 1997 (N = 1,515 authors) Total # of Articles # of Authors Percentage Cumulative % 10 1 0.07% 0.07% 8 2 0.13% 0.20% 7 5 0.33% 0.53% 6 2 0.13% 0.66% 5 6 0.40% 1.06% 4 26 1.72% 2.77% 3 50 3.30% 6.07% 2 236 15.58% 21.65% 1 1,187 78.35% 100.00% 1,515 100.01% 358 College & Research Libraries July 1999 TABLE 3 Coauthorship Patterns of D.S. Academic Librarians (1,579 Articles Published 1993-1997) Authors Articles Percentage Cumulative % 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 869 574 94 21 15 5 1 55.03% 36.35% 5.95% 1.33% 0.95% 0.32% 0.06% 55.03% 91.39% 97.34% 98.67% 99.62% 99.94% 100.00% Totals 1,579 99.99% ductivity of LIS faculty, the degree of col­ laboration within and among disciplines and institutions, and the productivity of librarians vis-à-vis their institutional af­ filiation. Productivity of Academic Librarians and LIS Faculty Each study that has examined the publica­ tion patterns of either practicing academic librarians or LIS faculty has used a differ­ ent journal set, a distinct methodology, and a different time period. Therefore, any comparisons can only look for trends or general patterns and cannot be absolute. The present study identified 1,515 aca­ demic librarians who produced 1,579 ar­ ticles in thirty-two LIS journals over a five- year period, 1993–1997. Fifty-five percent of these articles were single-authored and, TABLE 4 Most Productive Libraries, 1993-1997 (386 Libraries, Ranked by # Authors) Institution Authors Articles Pennsylvania State University Cornell University University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Minnesota University of Illinois at Chicago Iowa State University Ohio State University Rutgers University Texas A&M University University of Florida-Gainesville University of Michigan University of Nebraska Northern Illinois University University of New Mexico Auburn University State University of New York-Albany University of Arizona University of Colorado-Boulder Kent State University Harvard University 35 32 31 31 30 29 27 27 26 22 18 18 17 17 17 17 17 16 16 16 46 32 40 28 38 35 41 27 25 19 24 12 26 21 19 19 15 14 14 14 Publication Patterns of U.S. Academic Librarians 359 on average, any one academic librarian author published 0.96 peer-reviewed ar­ ticles in the five-year period. Therefore, academic librarians who published pro­ duced 0.19 peer-reviewed articles per year in the thirty-two studied journals. All the overlapping institutions and all but one of the top twenty institu­ tions from the present study are either ARL libraries or Research I institutions. The present study found that 43.6 per­ cent of all published peer-reviewed articles were written by at least one academic librar­ ian, compared to 34.4 percent in the Krausse and Sieburth study and 44.2 percent in the Watson study.29–30 As pointed out earlier, different lists of LIS titles were used in each study; however, seven titles overlap be­ tween the Krausse and Sieburth study and the present study. One finds that 46.5 per­ cent of the articles in Krausse and Sieburth’s seven overlapping titles were authored by academic librarians, whereas 62.8 percent from the present study were. Eight titles overlap between the Watson study and the present study. However, Watson assigned fractional credit to authors and institutions for multi-authored papers, so a similar com­ parison was not possible. As was noted ear­ lier, the Watson and the Krausse and Sieburth studies included material that might not have been peer-reviewed. Assum­ ing that the proportion of academic librar­ ians writing refereed articles is the same as that of academic librarians writing nonrefereed articles, the comparison of data from the present study with data from the Krausse and Sieburth study suggests an increase in the percentage of material pub­ lished by academic librarians. Pettigrew and Nicholls found that all LIS faculty from Ph.D.-producing library schools published 4.58 articles in peer- reviewed journals over an eleven-year period, or 0.42 articles per year for these LIS faculty.31 Faculty from library schools with master ’s degrees produced an aver­ age of 2.85 articles in eleven years, or .26 articles per year. A study by Pamela S. Bradigan and Carol A. Mularski of a ran­ dom sample of health sciences academic librarians found that this group of librar­ ians published in numbers similar to LIS faculty.32 The survey had a 71.7 percent response rate and just over 50 percent of the respondents had published in a ten- year period. The respondents averaged .27 articles per year. Pettigrew and Nicholls located articles through database searching and searches on the names of the whole population of LIS faculty, whereas the present study obtained data from thirty-two journals and did not at­ tempt to determine the percentage of aca­ demic librarians who publish. In 1983, John Centra reported that two samples of 2,973 and 1,623 faculty aver­ aged 1.7 and 2.5 publications, respec­ tively, over a five-year period.33 Publica­ tions were not limited to journal articles. The second group included authors from institutions that placed more emphasis on research than the former group did. The number of publications averaged .34 and .50 publications per year, respectively. A multidisciplinary national survey of fac­ ulty in 1989 reported by Ernest L. Boyer found that, overall, 59 percent of faculty published five or fewer journal articles over the course of their careers.34 Even though these sets of data on the average number of publications per year are not directly comparable, what is clear is that the number of articles published per year by both academic librarians who publish and LIS faculty is less than one article per year. This output appears to be comparable to that of faculty in disci­ plines outside LIS. Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Publication Patterns More than one-third (36.5%) of the coau­ thored and multiple-authored articles show collaboration, either within or be­ tween institutions. As librarians become more involved with teaching information access on their campuses and working with faculty in other fields who are us­ ing information technology in their teach­ ing and research, collaborative publica­ http:careers.34 http:period.33 http:faculty.32 http:faculty.31 360 College & Research Libraries July 1999 tion seems likely to increase. Several ear­ lier studies examined collaborative rela­ tionship among LIS authors. In 1988, Peter Hernon and Candy Schwartz, editors of Library & Information Science Research, reviewed the contents of its first twenty volumes.35 Approximately one-third of the articles were coauthored, and 15.6 percent of all authors came from departments outside the library and schools of LIS, including management, business, communications, psychology, and education as well as students, con­ sultants, and others from the private sec­ tor. However, Hernon and Schwartz did not provide data on how many of the 15.6% were collaborative projects with LIS faculty or academic librarians. A similar study by James L. Terry revealed that be­ tween 1989 and 1994, only 9.1 percent of all authors in College & Research Libraries came from nonlibrary institutions or or­ ganizations.36 Terry compared his study with Paul Metz’s earlier study of author­ ship patterns in College & Research Librar­ ies which found a larger percentage of articles originating from nonlibrary sources–12.68 percent between 1939 and 1979, and 18.62 percent between 1980 and 1988.37 Terry and Metz only tabulated in­ stitutional affiliation for the first author. Data from the present study show that 72.96 percent of all the authors in College & Research Libraries come from academic libraries. The Terry and Metz data present gross numbers of institutional affiliations of individuals publishing in library sci­ ence titles, but neither of these studies looked for collaboration within articles. The present study presents benchmark data on the degree of both interinstitutional and intra-institutional collaboration of aca­ demic librarians. These data show that those outside the field of librarianship pub­ lish in the LIS literature and do collabo­ rate with academic librarians. Institutional Affiliation and Librarian Productivity Table 4 lists those most-productive librar­ ies with the highest number of published articles. Both the Budd and Seavey and the Watson studies identified a similar list of most-productive libraries.38–39 Eleven of the top twenty (55%) institutions on the Budd and Seavey list and nine of the top twenty (45%) institutions on the Watson list are also in the top twenty institutions of the present study. All the overlapping institutions and all but one of the top twenty institutions from the present study are either ARL libraries or Research I institutions. Similarly, a study of author­ ship patterns from twenty years of the journal Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory found that 56.5 percent of the au­ thors were affiliated with ARL institu­ tions.40 Mickey Zemon and Alice Harrison Bahr confirmed the smaller proportion of contributions to the literature by librar­ ians from college libraries.41 They pointed out that academic authors from colleges were most likely to come from prestigious undergraduate institutions with a selec­ tive admissions policy. The relationship between the charac­ teristics of an institution and the publish­ ing productivity of its librarians deserves further investigation. This study has shown that the size of the library and the prestige of the parent institution appear to be important factors. An overall insti­ tutional climate that supports research probably fosters it among librarians as well. Other variables also may be present because some large research libraries pub­ lished less than smaller libraries. One could speculate that faculty status for li­ brarians might have an impact on publi­ cation. Faculty status has many varia­ tions, with some institutions requiring substantial, peer-reviewed publications for tenure and others requiring different types of publication or professional in­ volvement. Library size, institutional cli­ mate, and faculty status are all very com­ plex factors. It was beyond the scope of the present study to explore the relation­ ships of these influences to publication productivity. Conclusion Several trends have been noted. Academic librarians are contributing a very signifi­ http:libraries.41 http:tions.40 http:sources�12.68 http:ganizations.36 http:volumes.35 Publication Patterns of U.S. Academic Librarians 361 cant proportion of the LIS literature. The proportion of contributions by academic librarians to the scholarly literature may be increasing. Although the data are lim­ ited, it appears that academic librarians who publish do so as frequently as LIS fac­ ulty in general. Academic librarians at large research institutions with ARL and Re­ search I standing publish more than librar­ ians at smaller institutions. Single author­ ship is the norm, although coauthorship is very important. Collaborative endeavors between librarians and nonlibrarians oc­ cur within and across institutions. In all, literature in LIS has many types of authors. Benchmark data on authorship and in­ stitutional productivity could be particu­ larly useful for those institutions that ei­ ther have promotion and tenure reviews for librarians or some similar evaluation that assesses scholarship. The data could provide a context for evaluating the records of individuals under review. In addition, academic librarians who aspire to build a research and publication record could use the present results to set productivity goals. These findings also could help professional library associations develop credentialing standards, similar to those used by the Medical Library Association’s Academy of Health Information Professionals. The nineteen journals that contained at least one-third of the articles authored by academic librarians could be considered a core list of peer-reviewed journals for aca­ demic librarianship. The list includes gen­ eral titles such as College & Research Librar­ ies as well as more specialized publications such as American Archivist. It illustrates the range of venues in which academic librar­ ians publish reports of their scholarship and research. One would expect that aca­ demic librarians also would turn to these titles to provide evidence for decision mak­ ing when seeking answers to theoretical or practical questions about librarianship. Questions not addressed in this study suggest directions for future research. The present study does not investigate librar­ ians’ contributions to the non-peer-re­ viewed literature or the nonserial litera­ ture, as either monographs or book chap­ ters, nor does it assess their publication of directories and annotated bibliogra­ phies, standard genres of the LIS field. The present study’s examination of the peer-reviewed LIS journal literature is not a content analysis of this literature, nor does it address the motivation for those academic librarians to engage in research and publication. Additional work in any of these areas would provide a fuller un­ derstanding of the publication patterns of academic librarians and complement the findings presented here. In ending this article, it is worthwhile to place publication by academic librar­ ians within the contexts of the needs of the profession and the place of LIS in the academy. The rate of change of informa­ tion technology is so rapid that there is a great need for scholarship that helps li­ brarians understand what they must do to best serve their users. At the same time, to remain a learned profession, LIS must retain its place in the universities. As Alvin B. Kernan has argued in Death of Literature, no field of knowledge can con­ tinue to exist without such standing.42 The core group of scholars in LIS is the full-time faculty of LIS schools. These faculty number 600, far fewer than fac­ ulty in disciplines such as chemistry and philosophy and professional areas such as law and medicine. Given the relatively small number of its core group of schol­ ars, LIS needs the contributions of prac­ titioners to meet the challenges of the in­ formation age and to bolster the stand­ ing of the discipline in the academy. This article has documented substantial pub­ lishing by academic librarians, particu­ larly those from a number of ARL and Research I universities. It is important that they sustain their productivity and that others join them. Notes 1. Karen E. Pettigrew and Paul T. Nicholls, “Publication Patterns of LIS Faculty from 1982–92: http:standing.42 362 College & Research Libraries July 1999 Effects of Doctoral Programs,” Library and Information Science Research 16(1994):139–56. 2. Marcia J. Bates, “The Role of Publication Type in the Evaluation of LIS Programs,” Library Information Science Research 20(1998): 187–98. 3. Ibid., 188. 4. Ibid., 193. 5. Sylvia C. Krausse and Janice F. Sieburth, “Patterns of Authorship in Library Journals by Academic Librarians,” Serials Librarian 9 (spring 1985):127–38. 6. Ibid., 130. 7. Ibid., 132. 8. Paula Watson, “Production of Scholarly Articles by Academic Librarians and Library School Faculty,” College & Research Libraries 46 (July 1985): 334–42. 9. Ibid., 336. 10. Ibid., 335. 11. John M. Budd and Charles A. Seavey, “Characteristics of Journal Authorship by Academic Librarians,” College & Research Libraries 51 (Sept. 1990): 463–70. 12. Ibid., 466. 13. Ibid. 14. Mary T. Kim, “Ranking of Journals in Library and Information Science: A Comparison of Perceptual and Citation-based Measures,” College & Research Libraries 52 (Jan. 1991): 24–37. 15. Barbara J. Via, “Publishing in the Journal Literature of Library and Information Science: A Survey of Manuscript Review Processes and Acceptance,” College & Research Libraries 57 (July 1996): 365–76. 16. Krausse and Sieburth, “Patterns of Authorship in Library Journals by Academic Librarians.” 17. Watson, “Production of Scholarly Articles by Academic Librarians and Library School Faculty.” 18. Budd and Seavey, “Characteristics of Journal Authorship by Academic Librarians,” 464. 19. Kim, “Ranking of Journals in Library and Information Science.” 20. David F. Kohl and Charles H. Davis, “Rating of Journals by ARL Directors and Deans of Library and Information Science Schools,” College & Research Libraries 46 (Jan.1985): 40–47. 21. Via, “Publishing in the Journal Literature of Library and Information Science.” 22. Daniel O’Connor and Phyllis Van Orden, “Getting into Print,” College & Research Libraries 39 (Sept. 1978): 389–96. 23. Budd and Seavey, “Characteristics of Journal Authorship by Academic Librarians.” 24. O’Connor and Van Orden, “Getting into Print,” 390. 25. Thomas E. Nisonger, “Authorship in Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory,” Library Acqui­ sitions: Practice & Theory 20 (1996): 395–419. 26. Watson, “Production of Scholarly Articles by Academic Librarians and Library School Faculty,” 335. 27. Krausse and Sieburth, “Patterns of Authorship in Library Journals by Academic Librarians,” 128. 28. Budd and Seavey, “Characteristics of Journal Authorship by Academic Librarians,” 464. 29. Krausse and Sieburth, “Patterns of Authorship in Library Journals by Academic Librar­ ians,” 129. 30. Watson, “Production of Scholarly Articles by Academic Librarians and Library School Faculty,” 336. 31. Pettigrew and Nicholls, “Publication Patterns of LIS Faculty from 1982–92,” 143. 32. Pamela S. Bradigan and Carol A. Mularski, “Authorship Outlets of Academic Health Sci­ ences Librarians,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 80 (Apr. 1992): 188–91. 33. John Centra, “Research Productivity and Teaching Effectiveness,” Research in Higher Edu­ cation 18 (1983): 381–83. 34. Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 1990), table A-19. 35. Peter Hernon and Candy Schwartz, “Library & Information Science Research–Marking the Journal’s 20th Anniversary,” Library & Information Science Research 20 (1998): 309–20. 36. James L. Terry, “Authorship in College & Research Libraries Revisited: Gender, Institutional Affiliation, Collaboration,” College & Research Libraries 57 (July 1996): 380. 37. Paul Metz “A Statistical Profile of College & Research Libraries,” College & Research Libraries 50 (Jan. 1989): 42–47. 38. Budd and Seavey, “Characteristics of Journal Authorship by Academic Librarians.” 39. Watson, “Production of Scholarly Articles by Academic Librarians and Library School Faculty.” 40. Nisonger, “Authorship in Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory.” 41. Mickey Zemon and Alice Harrison Bahr, “An Analysis of Articles by College Librarians,” College & Research Libraries 59 (1998): 431. 42. Alvin B. Kernan, Death of Literature (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Pr., 1990).