PUBLICATIONS OF AUSTRALIAN LIS ACADEMICS
IN DATABASES1
Concepción S. Wilson a,*, Sebastian K. Boell a,
Mary Anne Kennan a,b, Patricia Willard a
School of Information Systems, Technology and Management; The
University of New South Wales; Sydney, NSW; 2052, Australia
b
School of Information Studies; Charles Sturt University; Wagga
Wagga, NSW; 2678, Australia
a
Abstract
This paper examines aspects of journal articles published
from 1967 to 2008, located in eight databases, and
authored or co-authored by academics serving for at
least two years in Australian LIS programs from 1959 to
2008. These aspects are: inclusion of publications in
databases,
publications
in
journals,
authorship
characteristics of publications, productivity, and subject
content of publications over time. Results indicate that
national and LIS-specific databases provided adequate
coverage; however, no single database provided over
half of all publications. More than half of all articles were
published in national journals focusing on aspects of LIS
in Australia; however, there is a trend for increasing
publications in international journals. Most of the earlier
publications had one author, but multiple authorship in
publications has increased since 1999. Overall the
number of publications per LIS academic is low; however,
per capita productivity has been increasing since the
mid-1990s. Finally, titles of articles reveal a shift from
library-related terms to information-related terms.
1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Research Applications in Library and Information
Studies (RAILS) Seminar held at Queensland University of Technology in May 2011.
*
Corresponding author. Email addresses: c.wilson@unsw.edu.au; Sebastian.boell@unsw.edu.au;
mkennan@csu.edu.au; p.willard@unsw.edu.au.
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of Australian LIS Academics in Databases. Australian Academic and Research Libraries. 43(3). 211-230.
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Introduction
In 1959 the first LIS school in higher education institutions was established by
John Metcalfe at the University of New South Wales, aiming to develop LIS
education and research in Australia (Metcalfe 1959). 2 Since then LIS schools
have been established around Australia and hundreds of academics have
worked in the field (Wilson et al. 2010). While developments in Australian LIS
education and their implications have been discussed earlier (see for example,
Hallam 2007, Harvey & Higgins 2003, Rochester et al. 1997), there has not
been a comprehensive investigation of the publications produced by Australian
LIS academics working over an extended period, nor the visibility and coverage
of these publications in databases. This paper aims to close this gap and to
answer the following questions: To what extent are Australian publications by
LIS academics covered in databases? Does coverage of publications in
databases change over time? How much of the literature is covered in more
than one database? What percentage of the literature appears in journals and
to what extent are the journal articles by Australian LIS academics in national
and international journals? Answers to these questions are particularly
important in a general academic climate in which evaluation of research is of
increasing importance (Butler 2008).
This paper investigates the presence in selected databases of the publications
of Australian LIS academics between 1967 and 2008. Exploring the data along
a number of dimensions reveals aspects of Australian LIS academic publishing
behaviour including the originating country of the journal, characteristics of
authorship in journal articles, and the subject content of the articles as
represented by their titles. The overarching question is: Do the journal articles
authored or co-authored by Australian LIS academics appear to be adequately
represented in LIS-specific databases? Related to this is the question of
whether a number of these databases need to be searched to capture what
might be a fairly comprehensive collection of these articles. The focus for the
data gathering has been on Australian LIS academics and their journal articles;
hence, publications of Australian LIS practitioners are not included. The
importance of this research goes beyond Australia as it throws light on
database coverage in general. It may benefit LIS (or other disciplines) in
nations other than Europe and North America conducting similar studies to
assess which databases provide the best coverage of their research papers.
There is particular value for those publishing in countries which have a
relatively small national professional literature and in which there are
pressures on academics to publish in international journals.
2 The generic acronym LIS indicates ‘Library or Librarianship’; ‘Information or Knowledge’; and ‘Science,
Studies, Services or Management’ used variously in Australian higher education institutions. The term
‘school’ describes a LIS teaching unit although the unit may be called department, program, etc.
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of Australian LIS Academics in Databases. Australian Academic and Research Libraries. 43(3). 211-230.
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This paper makes the following contribution towards a better understanding of
Australian LIS academic literature and its coverage in databases: (1) It
investigates the coverage of this literature in different databases; (2) it
provides an overview of the journals in which publications have appeared; (3) it
scrutinizes publication behaviour of academics over time; and finally (4) it
analyzes broad topics academics have investigated over four decades.
Literature
This paper brings together, and is informed by, two streams of LIS research:
studies on database coverage and earlier research examining the
characteristics and trends of different sets of publications.
In the first stream, studies examine the extent of coverage of the LIS literature
in different databases. Over 30 years ago researchers began to compare
database coverage using specific LIS topics as benchmarks (Hawkins & Miller
1977). The inclusion and overlap of LIS journals in databases were studied by
LaBorie et al. (1985) and more recently by Chen (2006) and Boell (2010).
Another approach compared the coverage of individual LIS journal articles in
different databases (Jacsó 1998; Walters & Wilder 2003). Our study contributes
to this literature by investigating the coverage of databases for publications
produced by LIS academics in Australia. An understanding of which databases
yield the best results may therefore aid LIS researchers and those purchasing
access to databases in higher education institutions.
The second stream relates to the bibliometric analysis of characteristics and
trends for different sets of publications in LIS. Example of LIS studies
investigating publications on different topics include: burnout of librarians
(Blazek & Parris 1992), school librarianship (Clyde 2004), literature about
bibliometrics (Patra et al. 2006), digital libraries (Singh et al. 2007), and subject
indexing (Tsay 2004). Results from such studies can provide insights into
various distributions of publications: in journals, among authors, and over
subject areas (Wilson, 1999).
In addition to topic-oriented studies, numerous studies use databases for
analyzing research at the institutional, country, or geographical region level.
Most notable is a series of papers investigating LIS publications in North
America for almost four decades between 1966 and 2004 using the Social
Sciences Citation Index (Hayes 1983; Budd & Seavey 1996; Budd, 2000; Adkins
& Budd 2006, 2007). Other North American LIS studies use the Library
Literature database (Wallace 1990; Boyce & Hendren 1996).
Beyond North America, researchers have conducted surveys of publications by
academics from other countries or regions: He and Wang (2006) looked at
China; Åström (2008), the Nordic countries; Park (2008), the Asia-Pacific region.
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of Australian LIS Academics in Databases. Australian Academic and Research Libraries. 43(3). 211-230.
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Results from such studies show the characteristics of authorship over time and
reflect on the productivity of LIS academics, the number of authors
collaborating on papers, or changes in topics researched. Such studies are
often undertaken using only single databases. Studies such as that by
Pettigrew and Nicholls (1994) which investigated multiple databases are rare.
However, coverage of journals in single databases is limited when compared to
the number of publications that can be found when using multiple databases
(Hood & Wilson 2001). Yerkes and Glogowski (1990) demonstrated that
coverage of the LIS literature varies between databases; Meho and Yang (2007)
found considerable differences in citations to LIS publications listed by the Web
of Science and Scopus; and Meho and Sugimoto (2009) identified differences in
the coverage of the same LIS journal in different databases.
Informed by these two literature streams, this paper investigates the presence
in selected databases of the publications of Australian LIS academics between
1967 and 2008 and explores coverage of Australian LIS literature in databases;
the journals in which Australian LIS academics have published; the
characteristics of authorship; and the number of publications over time.
Method
From a comprehensive list of Australian LIS academics working in the field for
fifty years (1959 to 2008), author searches over multiple databases were
conducted. The list includes all academics working in Australian LIS schools at
higher education institutions which initially included universities, colleges of
advanced education (CAEs) and teacher colleges; the latter two types of
institutions eventually became (or were absorbed into) universities in the early
1990s. This list of academics was compiled and cross-checked using numerous
sources including: academic handbooks or calendars in print, microfiche and
electronic form; Commonwealth Universities Yearbooks; directories of
Australian LIS professionals; web resources; journals and newsletters (Wilson et
al. 2010). In total 693 academics working in the field from 1959 to 2008 were
identified. This list included 311 people who worked as LIS academics for only
one or two years, many in tutor (teaching assistant) or lecturer (usually casual)
positions. A search of Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) for
these 311 academics located only 20 publications, so we decided to
concentrate searching efforts on multiple databases for the 382 people who
had worked as academics for more than two years.
Eight different databases were searched for the publications of each of those
382 academics. To minimize the retrieval of incorrect records, author searches
of Australian LIS academics were combined with ranges of years consisting of
the overall time academics worked in one of the Australian LIS schools plus an
additional two years to cover publication time-lag. During the study period,
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of Australian LIS Academics in Databases. Australian Academic and Research Libraries. 43(3). 211-230.
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some academics moved between practice and academia. As far as they are
identifiable, only publications produced during their time as academics are
included in this study (Wilson et al. 2010). The databases searched included
major international LIS databases: Library and Information science Abstracts
(LISA), Library Literature and Information Science (LLIS), and Library
Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA). Information Science and
Technology Abstracts (ISTA) was not searched as it is now mostly incorporated
into LISTA (Boell 2010), making it somewhat redundant (Jacsó 2007). These LISspecific databases were complemented by the Science Citation Index (SCI), the
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts and Humanities Citation
Index (AHCI). SSCI is generally the database of choice for compiling lists of LIS
publications in North America or Europe. In addition, two databases of special
relevance in the Australian context were searched: Australian Library and
Information Science Abstracts (ALISA) and the Australian Education Index (AEI+
). As authors were searched by name, the three citation databases and AEI+
would identify some of the publications by these authors in non-LIS fields.
Publications retrieved from any of the eight databases were then collated into a
single data set. Refworks (http://www.refworks.com) was used for this process
as it provided sufficient import filter for the records exported from each
database. It thus allowed the unification of records from all searched
databases. During this process duplicate entries for publications retrieved from
more than one database were removed while any additional metadata (mostly
keywords and abstracts) were retained. The result was a list of unique
publications with various fields, one of which indicated in which database each
publication was found.
Finally, visualizations of the 50 most common keywords in the titles of the journal articles for four time periods were created using the word frequency analysis of the NVivo qualitative data analysis computer software (http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo.aspx). Common words were excluded from a
stop word list, and a stemming filter was applied to conflate counts for similar
words: for example, 'library' and 'libraries' were counted as 'library'.
Results and Discussion
The results are introduced and discussed from the following perspectives:
database coverage, journals in databases, characteristics of articles in journals,
and subject coverage as reflected in titles of journal articles.
Examination of database coverage
Results from the eight databases varied widely, both with regard to the number
of records obtained from each database and with regard to the document types
indexed in each database: for example, books, chapters in books, conference
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material and journal material. Journal material can be research-related (e.g.,
research articles or review articles), or non-research related (e.g., letters to the
editor, editorials, obituaries, book reviews, and conference reports).
In terms of the number of records obtained from each database for the 382 LIS
academics, the results ranged from 40 (AHCI) to 1,938 (LLIS) records (Table 1).
Generally the fewest number of records were found in the three citation indexes published by Thomson Reuters, forming the major sources in the Web of Science (WoS). This indicates that the WoS (used routinely to search for publications by North American LIS academics) is generally not a good source for publications by most Australian LIS academics. Alternately, Australian LIS educators need to publish in international journals (indexed in international databases such as WoS) to gain visibility in the global research arena; since 2000,
this practice has been increasing.
Table 1: The number and percentage share of document types in publications by
Australian LIS academics for each of eight databases, 1967-2008.
ALISA
Journal articles¹
692
% share in Database
55.1%
Other journal material²
19
% share in Database
1.5%
Conference material
256
% share in Database
20.4%
Book material³
134
% share in Database
10.7%
Book chapters
156
% share in Database
12.4%
total
1257
LISA LISTA AEI+ SSCI
SCI AHCI LLIS Total
1088
636
905
245
87
21
604 4278
75.7% 53.9% 47.8% 71.0% 86.1% 52.5% 31.2%
167
318
17
92
10
18 1237 1878
11.6% 26.9% 0.9% 26.7% 9.9% 45.0% 63.8%
79
115
506
8
4
1
23 992
5.5% 9.7% 26.7% 2.3% 4.0% 2.5% 1.2%
66
66
254
37 557
4.6% 5.6% 13.4%
- 1.9%
37
45
213
37 488
2.6% 3.8% 11.2%
- 1.9%
1437
1180 1895
345
101
40 1938
¹ includes reviews
² Other Journal M aterial includes mainly book reviews, and also other material such as editorials, obituaries, conference
reports, etc.
³ Book M aterial included: books, theses, reports, and bibliographies.
With regard to different document types published by the 382 LIS academics,
Table 1 shows marked differences. First, journal articles are the most common
form of publication indexed for Australian LIS academics. These are followed by
conference-related publications, with the fewest records found for books and
book chapters. Secondly, it can be deceptive to look only at the total numbers
of records retrieved from each database. While most records were found in
LLIS, many were book reviews. When looking only at journal articles, LLIS falls
behind ALISA, LISA, LISTA and AEI+. Thirdly, the results indicate the relative
importance of Australian databases, especially AEI+. This is somewhat
surprising as ALISA could perhaps be expected to fare better in covering
Australian LIS literature. However, ALISA ceased publication in 2005 and only
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of Australian LIS Academics in Databases. Australian Academic and Research Libraries. 43(3). 211-230.
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provided few records for the period after 2000. Finally, different databases
specialise in different content. For instance, the three citation databases do not
cover books or book chapters and the only LIS-related conferences included are
the ASIST Proceedings. The remainder of the results and discussion focus only
on journal articles.
Journal articles in databases
After removing all material other than journal articles and all duplicate entries
for the journal articles from multiple databases, there were 2,232 unique
journal articles.3 Figure 1 plots the number of journal articles found for each
year and the number of LIS academics working in the field for more than two
years. The number of academics can be seen to fluctuate, with a steady
decline from the mid 1990s; this is not always the case with the number of
publications. While searches were conducted back to 1959, journal articles
were only found for 1967 onwards. The reason for this is due in part to the time
period covered by the databases. For instance LLIS started only in the 1980s
and for most of the other databases, the coverage of articles before 1980 is
sparse with LISA being the only noteworthy exception (Table 2).
Figure 1: Number of unique journal articles authored by 382
longer-serving Australian LIS academics (1967-2008), and the number of such academics in Australian LIS programs (1959-2008), per
year. Data used is from Wilson et al. (in press).
Generally the number of articles retrieved indicates that the output of journal
articles by Australian LIS academics increased after the mid 1970s. It seems
3 In a related study (Wilson et al. in press) there were 2,235 unique articles for all years. Further analysis
for this study identified three additional duplicates which were removed.
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therefore that there may be a time lag between the increasing number of
academics working in the field and an increasing number of journal articles
found in databases. A similar effect can also be found around 2000 when the
number of publications drops following a decline in the number of LIS
academics in the late 1990s. In this context the spike around 2005 to 2006 is
perhaps noteworthy. This spike occurs at a time when there was discussion in
Australia of introducing a research evaluation exercise, the Research Quality
Framework (RQF), which would include assessment of the number and quality
of journal publications by academics. Hence, research and publishing activities
increased (Steele et al. 2006). The RQF was dropped following the 2007 federal
elections: however national research evaluation continues in the form of the
ERA 2010 (http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2010.htm) and the ERA 2012
(http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_2012.htm). Overall there is a clear
pattern for an increasing number of publications since 1980 followed by a
relatively stable period in the 1980s and 1990s.
While declining academic staff numbers may account for part of the decrease
of publications in the 2000s, Table 2 indicates that database coverage may be
another reason. ALISA had reasonable coverage of journal articles in the 1980s
and the 1990s; it was the second most productive database for both decades.
From 2000, however, coverage of articles in ALISA decreased, ceasing
completely after 2004. In addition, there is a declining coverage in AEI+ over
the years. Whether or not ALISA's lack of coverage is one of the reasons for the
decline in the number of publications found after 2000, the demise of ALISA
itself is not healthy for LIS in Australia. Moreover, the decline in numbers of
Table 2: The number of journal articles by Australian LIS academics retrieved from each of
eight databases, and the total number of unique journal articles, in five periods from 19672008.
Years
ALISA
LISA
LISTA
AEI+
SSCI
SCI
AHCI
LLIS
Total unique
journal articles
for each period
in all databases
1967-1969 1970-1979 1980-1989 1990-1999 2000-2008
0
0
380
293
19
8
128
305
386
261
3
27
96
213
297
0
22
434
271
178
0
10
57
94
84
0
1
6
30
50
0
0
7
10
4
0
0
106
275
223
11
169
677
816
559
Total all
years
692
1088
636
905
245
87
21
604
2232
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articles found in both Australian databases is evident from the 1990s while the
total number of publications during that decade was still increasing.
Furthermore, there are other databases that improve coverage over time, for
example SCI and LISTA. Finally, numbers for LISA and LLIS would also indicate a
drop in the total number of publications since 2000; this would be consistent
with the decline in LIS academic staff numbers.
Database coverage of journal articles
Roughly one-half of all records (49.7%) can be found only in one database with
all databases returning some unique records (between 13.9% and 57.1%), thus
warranting a search on multiple databases for those seeking more
comprehensive coverage (Table 3). However, as can be seen in Table 3
databases varied in their contribution of unique articles. Almost one-third of all
unique articles can be found in LISA. This makes LISA the most productive
database for searching Australian LIS articles. Not only were most articles
found in LISA; LISA also contained the greatest share of unique articles (with
the exception of AHCI which has negligible database coverage). One word of
caution regarding the coverage of more current LIS research: some of LISA's
advantage may be explained by its near monopoly for publications prior to
1980 (Table 2). Furthermore, LISTA’s coverage of literature published since
2000 is somewhat greater than LISA’s (Table 2).
Table 3: The number and percentage share of unique journal articles by Australian LIS
academics per database, 1967-2008.
Only this database
% unique
ALISA LISA LISTA AEI+
123
358
168
293
17.8 32.9
26.4 32.4
SSCI
34
13.9
SCI AHCI LLIS
14
12
108
16.1
57.1 17.9
Total
1110
49.7
Looking at the number of unique articles in Table 3, two further points are
noteworthy. First, even though AHCI contributed only a small number of
records, most of the articles found through AHCI were unique in the sense that
they could only be found by searching AHCI. Secondly, while regrettable, the
demise of ALISA may be tolerable when searching for Australian LIS literature;
as the total loss of unique records (123) is only about 6%. This is somewhat
surprising given the relative dominance of journal articles in Australian LIS
journals; however, explained in part by the demise of many national journals
over the 1967-2008 period (see Figures 2 and 3 below).
Regarding the document types indexed in the different databases, the findings
indicate that for non-journal publications of Australian LIS academics (i.e.,
conference materials, books and book chapters) AEI+ and ALISA are the most
useful databases to search (see Table 1). For book reviews LLIS is the most
productive database. However, if journal articles are the matter of interest, all
databases make a substantial contribution.
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Examination of Journals
Australian LIS academics published in a wide range of journals, with Australian
journals being the most important outlets. The 2,232 articles published by
Australian LIS academics appeared in 469 different journals. However, not all
articles found are ‘original’ research articles. For example, articles of a few
pages in the news magazine Incite were included as were articles of over 100
pages in the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology.
The distribution of articles over journals is highly skewed. Australian LIS
academics published in 233 journals (of 469) only once. This skew is also
apparent in publications over the first 38 journals represented in Figure 2. More
than half of all publications appeared in the 38 journals, with more than a
quarter of all publications being published in the top five journals, all of which
are Australian national journals. In fact all of the 16 journals in which Australian
LIS published most frequently are national journals. This underlines the
importance of national journals for LIS in Australia as well as the need for
Figure 2: Journals with >10 articles each by Australian LIS academics, in decreasing number of articles per journal, from 1967-2008. Total number of articles = 2,232, in 469 journals; number of articles in journals with >10 articles each = 1,261 (56.4% of total), in 38
(8.1% of total) journals.
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Australian LIS academics to publish in international journals (indexed in
international databases) to gain visibility in the global research arena.
As most of the journals in which Australian LIS academics published most
frequently (Figure 2) were Australian and have ceased, a valid question is:
have there been changes in the importance of Australian journals over time?
Further investigation of the ratio of international versus national journals is
provided by Figure 3. The erratic pattern in the years up to the early 1980s can
be explained in that prior to 1980 there were only a few publications indexed
by databases (Figure 1). However, when publications exceed a threshold of an
annual output of 50 indexed publications in 1981 the pattern becomes less
erratic.
Over the last 30 years there has been an increasing trend for Australian LIS
academics to publish in international journals. National journals still play an
important role in the Australian LIS discourse (Figure 3) in terms of
engagement with the LIS profession in Australia. Moreover, as publication
behaviour regarding international journals has changed over time it is a valid
question to ask if other patterns regarding journal publications have changed
over time as well.
Figure 3: Percentage share of journal articles by Australian LIS academics
in national (Australian) and international journals, 1967 to 2008.
Examination of Publications
Another indicator of publication behaviour is to look at patterns of authorship
and collaboration over time. Table 4 shows that over the complete timeframe,
close to three-quarters (72%) of the 2,232 journal articles had one author.
However, an increasing trend to collaborative publication and a decrease of
single authorship is also apparent: between 1967 and 1978, most (88%) of the
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articles were singly authored; however, by 1999-2008, single authorship
dropped to just over a half (57%). As a result, over the four time periods the
average number of authors per article rose steadily from just over one to
nearly two authors in the last period.
Table 4: The number of journal articles by Australian LIS academics by the number of
authors per article, in four time periods, 1967-2008. The average number of authors in
each time period is also shown.
Number of Authors
per Article
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
10
16
Total
Average number of
authors
19671978
129
11
4
1
1
146
1.21
Number of Journal Articles
1979198919991988
1998
2008
524
577
377
79
182
163
16
31
74
4
7
27
2
2
9
2
4
1
2
1
1
1
628
802
656
1.24
1.37
1.72
all years
1,607
435
125
38
13
7
2
3
1
1
2,232
1.42
An increasing trend was also found regarding the number of journal articles
published per academic. Results in Figure 4 indicate that over the years
Australian LIS academics have become more productive. In 2008 the average
number of publications per academic nearly quadrupled since 1967. While this
growth appears impressive, over all publications per academic remains low.
Only in 1999 and in 2007 did the average productivity per academic exceed
one publication per year. For all other years academics published on average
less than one journal article per year. However, the distribution of journal
articles among authors is highly skewed; 118 of the 382 longer-serving
Australian LIS academics had not published any journal articles in journals
indexed by the eight selected databases. The 14 most productive academics
authored (or co-authored) over a quarter (634 of 2,232) of all the journal
articles. A detailed analysis of the productivity of these 14 Australian LIS
academics is provided by Wilson et al. (in press).
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Figure 4: Average number of journal articles per LIS
academic per year, and the trend line: 1967-2008.
A final characteristic of publication patterns over time is the approximate
length of an average article in a given year. As Figure 5 indicates, publications
have become longer over time. One reason for this may be the increasing
academization
of
Australian
LIS
academics
who
began
as
practitioners/educators (Wilson et al. 2010). Papers may have shifted from
shorter reports on more practical issues, for instance on library automation or
education, towards longer and theoretically oriented research papers. This
raises the question: can such speculations be grounded in firmer analysis of
the actual subject areas? An initial attempt to engage in such an analysis is
provided in the following section.
Figure 5: Average length (in pages) of journal articles published by
Australian LIS
academics per year and the trend line, 1967-2008.
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Subjects addressed over time
One attempt to gain some understanding on how topics change over time is to
look at the words used in titles of journal articles. A rough indicator can then be
provided by looking at aggregates of words in titles for year-ranges. Such an
analysis is provided in Figures 6 to 9 for publications from four different time
periods spanning 1967-2008. The larger a keyword, the more frequently it
appeared in the titles. Proximity of keywords has no particular importance.
Some observations can be made across all four time periods: the most obvious
is an increased of the term 'information' in titles, while at the same time the
word 'library' appeared less frequently. This is not surprising as over the four
time periods, there has been a clear move from ‘library’ to ‘information’ (or the
combination of both as in LIS), perhaps indicating a move from ‘library science'
towards the 'information science' of ‘library and information science’. This
move is also reflected in the changing name of databases. Before 2000 LLIS
was simply called Library Literature. Nevertheless, it is interesting that this
change is also reflected in titles of journal articles by Australian LIS academics.
Some further changes are visible over the four time periods. For example,
while ‘education’ seems to be a topic with consistent appearances in each
period, the keyword 'school' appears less frequently over time. Also, over all
four time periods, there is an increase in the number of times the keyword
'research' appears. This would suggest that LIS in Australia has moved from a
more vocation-based discipline driven by practitioners in the early years to a
more research-oriented discipline adapting to the university environment
(Wilson et al. 2010).
In addition to a general shift in orientation from 'library’ to 'information' and the
increasing use of 'research', at different points in time are also reflected in the
Figure 6: Visualization of the frequency of keywords in titles of journal articles authored or
co-authored by Australian LIS academics from 1967-1979; the larger the word, the more
frequent the usage.
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Figure 7: Visualization of the frequency of keywords in titles of journal articles authored or
co-authored by Australian LIS academics from 1980-1989; the larger the word, the more
frequent the usage.
Figure 8: Visualization of the frequency of keywords in titles of journal articles authored or
co-authored by Australian LIS academics from 1990-1999; the larger the word, the more
frequent the usage.
different figures. In earlier years (Figure 6) the focus on library-related areas is
evident. Not only did terms like 'librarianship' or 'librarian' appear frequently in
titles, terms closely associated with core library-related tasks such as
'classification' and 'selection' are clearly visible.
In the 1980s (Figure 7) words frequently used in titles still reflect library-related
topics; however, technology-related keywords start to appear: 'computer' and
'technology' are more frequently used in article titles. Also, in comparison to
what is found in the former decade ‘Australia’ and ‘Australian’ appear more
often in titles. One possible reason for this may be the onset of Australian
databases (ALISA; AEI+) during the 1980s which focus on covering literature by
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Figure 9: Visualization of the frequency of keywords in titles of journal articles authored or
co-authored by Australian LIS academics from 2000-2008; the larger the word, the more
frequent the usage.
Australians, and literature of particular importance to Australia (see Table 2).
Other terms that started to appear in the 1980s frequently are related to
‘management’ (manage, management, manager, managers, managing).
The importance of management-related terms continues to rise in the 1990s
(Figure 8). But also other emerging fields of interest, mostly related to
particular technologies, enter the scene: most obviously the term 'internet', but
also 'cd', 'rom' and 'electronic'. At the same time as technology-related papers
are on the rise, library-related papers decline. While catalogue-related terms
(catalogue, cataloguers, catalogues, cataloguing) were among commonly used
words in earlier decades they no longer feature from the 1990s onwards.
In the 2000s (Figure 9) ‘technology’ as a central aspect of journal publications
did not increase further. At least the term ‘technology’ featured less frequently
than in the 1990s. While terms such as 'Web', 'online', and 'search', 'searching'
or 'seeking' started to appear, the focus may not be on the technology as such
but on its use. This is also indicated by an increase of use-oriented terms and
the appearance of the term 'user'. An increasing interest in users is also
indicated by the fact that terms such as 'community' and 'collaborative'
appeared more frequently in titles. However, most obvious is an increase in the
term 'knowledge'. And finally the appearance of the term 'literacy', most likely
used as a part of the phrase ‘information literacy’ indicates an increasing
interest in this issue since 2000.
An analysis of frequently used words in titles indicates over all a broadening of
areas of interests over the last 40 years. While in early years library-oriented
activities such as cataloging and classification featured frequently; interest
seems to have shifted over the years from particular technologies towards
knowledge, users, and management.
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Conclusion
This article used an extensive list of academics working in Australian LIS
institutions for more than two years since 1959 to examine their publications.
In total 2,232 unique journal articles were found for those academics in eight
different databases. This enabled the investigation of the coverage of
Australian LIS literature in different databases, the journals academics
published in, changing publication patterns over time, as well as changes in
terms used in the titles of publications.
Results indicate that databases vary in their coverage of materials. While the
greatest number of journal articles was found through searching LISA, book
reviews featured heavily in LLIS; and AEI+ provided the most comprehensive
coverage of conference material, books, and book chapters. Some of LISA's
advantage in the coverage of journal articles stems from the fact that it is the
only database providing substantial coverage of literature published prior to
1980. Nevertheless, coverage of more recent articles published since 2000 is
more comprehensive in LISTA. Most importantly, however, almost half of all
journal articles could only be found in one database, thus underlining the
importance of searching multiple databases, and the need for libraries to
subscribe to multiple databases in the same subject area. Notably the small
number of publications by Australian LIS academics in the Web of Science (SCI,
SSCI, and AHCI) is sobering. In future research, it would be interesting to see if
Scopus provides better coverage of publications by Australian LIS academics
than WoS.
The results presented in this article also indicate that LIS academics in
Australia produced an annual total output of 70 to 80 publications in the 1980s
and 1990s. Since then publication output has declined. However, as the
number of academics working in the field also decreased since the late 1990s,
the average number of publications produced per academic per year has
increased. Similarly the number of academics collaborating on articles
increased over time as well the average length of articles.
The highly skewed distribution of articles over journals was observed. Journal
articles appeared in nearly 500 different journals. However, one-quarter
appeared in only five journals and more than one-half appeared in only 16
journals, all of which were published in Australia. This underlines the
importance of national journals for Australian LIS. However, there seems to be
an increasing trend for publications to appear in international journals.
Finally, analysis of the frequency of words appearing in the titles of publications
shows a clear shift from library-related topics towards information-related
areas. This indicates the adoption of information science (or studies) in the
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Australian LIS scene. Also featuring in this shift are other terms such as related
to literacy, the community, collaboration, Web, and searching.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the participants of RAILS 2011 for their comments, as well
as the anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of this paper for their feedback.
We would so like to thank the John Metcalfe Memorial Fund and the Australian
Postgraduate Awards (APA) for their financial support.
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