Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research
productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions
Concepción S. Wilson a,*, Sebastian K. Boell a, Mary Anne Kennan a,b, Patricia Willard a
a
b
School of Information Systems, Technology and Management, The University of New
South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia
School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2678,
Australia
Abstract
This paper surveys aspects of the research productivity and visibility of Australian Library
and Information Studies (LIS) educators as reflected in publications retrieved from eight
relevant databases. Searching was restricted to educators serving for at least two years in
Australian LIS programs from 1959 to 2008; the records obtained were downloaded and
checked for accuracy. The results show that fewer than five percent of educators, generally
with long service, produced over one-quarter of all journal articles, while nearly one-third of
educators authored no articles. About three-quarters of all journal articles were singleauthored; however, multiple authorship has increased over time, especially since 2000.
Nearly one-half of all articles were published in Australian national journals; as these
journals were indexed only in national and LIS-specific databases, such databases must be
included to obtain a reliable picture of Australian LIS research productivity.
Keywords: library and information studies educators, research productivity, visibility,
journals, databases, bibliometrics, Australia
* Corresponding author. Email addresses: c.wilson@unsw.edu.au (C. S. Wilson),
Sebastian.boell@unsw.edu.au (S. K. Boell), mkennan@csu.edu.au (M. A. Kennan),
p.willard@unsw.edu.au (P. Willard).
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
1/23
Introduction
Prior to the 1960s, aspiring LIS professionals in Australia were taught by practicing librarians
according to a syllabus and a series of examinations set by the Library Association of
Australia (now the Australian Library and Information Association, ALIA) for the
qualification of Registration. From 1959, professional LIS education moved into higher
education institutions, and the Registration system was gradually phased out, ending in 1980.
Especially in the early decades, most educators came from library practice. The new
academic workplace presented these former librarians with different demands, not only with
teaching, but also with research: an important role of the academics is to provide a foundation
of research and inquiry for their disciplines (see e.g., Budd & Seavey, 1996). It is of interest
to look at how well the transition has been made from practice to academia over the ensuing
fifty years. In an earlier paper we examined aspects of the academization of Australian LIS
educators through this period, including inter alia the increasing percentage of PhDs obtained
by staff (Wilson et al., 2010). Here we will examine another aspect of this process – the
output of research publications by staff.
Perhaps as important as research output (or productivity) is what may be termed the visibility
of this output to the global discipline of LIS. There are numerous electronic sources covering
a variety of scholarly publications (for example, open access journals; publications of various
document types via Google Scholar; publications made accessible by individuals, institutions,
organizations and societies). However, still the most important for research purposes are the
specialized subject literature databases that cover national and/or international journals and
conferences. Research visibility is frequently gauged through publications covered in a
selection of such databases. The storage and retrieval of research publications (or their
bibliographic surrogates) in databases ensures their potential impact on future scholarly
activities globally. Conversely, lack of inclusion means limited or negligible impact – an
unnoticed publication is an unread and uncited publication. Furthermore, there has been a
growth in research evaluation for institutions and for governments, using selected databases
from which to measure productivity and impact (see e.g., Butler, 2008). Such measures may
directly bear on subsequent funding, on career paths of educators, and even on the survival of
programs.
A first task is to define who we mean by educators in LIS programs in the Australian higher
education sector over the fifty-year period. The phrase ‘LIS program’ refers to a coherent set
of all LIS courses, undergraduate or postgraduate, taught together in an institution,
equivalently a department or school if an autonomous academic unit. The term ‘higher
education’ refers to that sector of post-secondary education that excludes vocational training.
We have taken LIS programs in higher education in Australia to be those professional level
programs accredited by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA). This is a
pragmatic choice – using accreditation as a way of ‘protecting space’ in a world where the
study of information is increasingly of interest in disciplines beyond LIS (Cronin, 2002). This
allows us to bypass exactly what comprises LIS – or for that matter, any discipline, domain or
specialty (see e.g., Palmer & Cragin, 2008). The many definitions and conceptions of LIS are
debated regularly (for example, at the triennial International Conference on Conceptions of
Library and Information Science, CoLIS). One definition, perhaps most compatible with this
study, is that LIS is a field which engages in teaching and research about libraries,
information and documentation as a domain in its own right (Hjørland, 2000). LIS is used as
the generic acronym to indicate Library or Librarianship; Information or Knowledge; and
Studies, Science, Services or Management. It must be acknowledged, though, that Australian
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
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LIS programs are not always named as such, nor do they have library or any variation of the
word in their titles.
With respect to staff, the term ‘educator’ is taken as more generic than the terms ‘academic’
or ‘faculty member’. From a comprehensive list of 693 LIS educators, variously listed as
serving in some capacity in Australian LIS programs from 1959 to 2008 (Wilson et al., 2010),
we have selected for the present study those 382 educators with more than two years total
service in Australian LIS programs per se. Educators could move, for example, to cognate
disciplines in the higher education sector, to LIS programs in other countries, or to practice in
libraries, and continue to publish similar works. Such publications have been excluded from
this study.
Thus, this paper surveys aspects of the research publications of longer-serving Australian LIS
educators over 50 years, as retrieved from selected national and international databases. We
believe it has value beyond Australian LIS. Firstly, within the global LIS community, the
Australian LIS study provides a comparison of research productivity with other countries or
geographical regions. Secondly, beyond LIS, this study may be related to teaching and
research in the many professions that have moved from institutions of practice into academia,
requiring a similar transformation of staff into academics.
Background: the Australian Context
It may be helpful here to briefly chronicle developments in Australian higher education
relevant to the research publication history of Australian LIS educators. Fuller accounts of
changes in Australian higher education are available at
www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Pages/default.aspx and accounts of the history of
Australian LIS programs are variously given by Rochester et al. (1997), Hallam (2007) and
Wilson et al. (2010).
In 1959, when Australian professional LIS education started to move into higher education
institutions, the Australian higher education sector consisted of universities (which were
autonomous institutions), and a variety of technical institutes/colleges and teachers colleges
(which were mainly under Australian State government education departments). It should be
noted that Australia then had, and still has, relatively few private (self-accrediting) higher
education institutions. Thus the first such LIS program began in a university, and the second
in a technical institute; school or teacher librarianship programs also appeared in teachers
colleges.
With a growing demand for student places in the higher education sector from the latter
1950s, the direction and financing of the sector were increasingly assumed by the Australian
Federal government. Most importantly, it largely adopted a commissioned report (Martin,
1964) recommending that the sector be remodelled as a ‘binary system’ of universities and of
colleges of advanced education (CAEs). The CAEs were to be either newly created or based
on reorganised selected technical and teachers colleges; to qualify, many such institutions had
to diversify and expand their curricula. Universities were intended to focus on the
advancement of knowledge, while CAEs were to focus on practical education – the Martin
report specifically saw new LIS programs as more suitably placed in the CAEs rather than in
universities. Thus the 1970s witnessed a proliferation of LIS programs, principally in the
CAEs. In 1978, Australia, a country with a population of just over 14 million (Australian
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
3/23
Bureau of Statistics, 2008), found itself with 19 LIS programs – two in universities and 17 in
CAEs – of which many were quite small.
Two decades later, in a more stringent economic environment, the Australian Federal
government adopted another commissioned report on higher education (Dawkins, 1988)
recommending that the sector be ‘rationalized’ to a Unified National System comprised only
of universities. In addition to existing universities, new public universities were to be created
(only) from a reorganisation of the CAEs – often from amalgamations of smaller institutions
or their absorption into existing universities. The former division of function was abandoned.
As a consequence, by the early1990s, all LIS higher education programs existed in
universities. However, in some cases institutional amalgamation led to amalgamation of
formerly separate LIS schools (and to their downsizing). Furthermore, the economic and
managerial climate was generally not favorable for small independent programs, and most
LIS programs were either absorbed into larger schools of other disciplines, or closed.
Particularly in the early decades of LIS programs in higher education in Australia, most
educators came from library practice, so the academic workplace presented these former
librarians with new tasks, including research. For many the introduction to research came
from enrolment in higher research degrees while also ‘on the job’. Even in CAEs, institutions
not initially intended to undertake research, ‘academic drift’ developed from the outset as
educators also acquired formal higher qualifications and participated in research and
publication. (A resulting political pressure was a factor in the development of the Unified
National System.) With the establishment of the Unified National System of universities from
the late 1980s, the research requirement on all staff was acknowledged, and increasingly
needed for promotion. New government funding policies for research were introduced
(Parliament of Australia, 2000-2001): funding which previously had been tied inter alia to
the status and size of the university was henceforth to be related only to the quality and the
impact of the research itself. This encouraged competition between universities for research
funds and put pressure on them to increase their research output. Whether there has yet been
a more equitable distribution of funds for research between the older-established universities
and the newer universities (with most of the extant LIS programs) is moot. In the last decade
the federal government has been under some pressure to find more satisfactory ways of
promoting research across the sector as shown in a succession of schemes: the Quality
Assurance Framework in 2000 (www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/occpaper/00g/00g.pdf),
the Research Quality Framework (RQF) in 2005 and Excellence in Research for Australia
(ERA) in 2008 (www.arc.gov.au).
Selected Bibliometric Studies
As further background for this study, the following provides a short account of selected
bibliometric studies on research productivity in LIS. Such studies generally focus on
publication trends of LIS scholarly literature such as: growth over time of the number of
publications and ranking by, for example, countries, institutions, schools, authors, journals.
Davarpanah and Aslekia (2008) provided a picture of the global distribution of papers in 56
LIS journals in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) from 2000 to 2004; the US led with 58%
of the journal articles, followed by the UK (10%), Canada (4%) and then Australia (3%).
Meho and Spurgin (2005) searched all publications of 68 North American LIS academics in
over 100 databases from 1982 to 2002 to provide a detailed assessment of research
productivity of North American LIS authors and programs. They found that only 10
databases ‘provided significant coverage of LIS indexed literature’ and limiting data sources
to fewer than about four databases leads to ‘inaccurate rankings and erroneous conclusions’.
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
4/23
LIS research productivity studies are generally geographically-oriented. One such series of
papers for North America, used publications gathered from SSCI to look at the research
productivity from 1964 to 2004 of faculty in all LIS programs accredited by the American
Library Association (ALA). These studies showed increases in LIS research productivity over
time suggesting increases in ‘faculty effectiveness’ (Hayes, 1983; Budd & Seavey, 1996;
Budd, 2000; Adkins & Budd, 2006; 2007). Boyce and Hendren (1996) used the Library
Literature database to look at the productivity of faculty from ALA accredited LIS schools in
North America for journal articles and book reviews from 1984 to1993. The authors
concluded that publication counts in Library Literature may not be ‘a valid single measure of
school effectiveness’ nor ‘account for publication outside traditional library literature’.
Extending the range and number of databases beyond SSCI or Library Literature, and the
types of publication to include more than just journal articles, Pettigrew and Nicholls (1994)
looked at nearly 8,000 publications by just over 600 LIS academics in ALA accredited
schools in North America over 11 years. They showed that productivity was higher in LIS
schools with PhD programs than in those without. Shaw and Vaughan (2008) investigated the
relationship of academic ranks versus publication and citation patterns of 30 LIS academics
from ALA accredited schools and found that as academics advanced in rank, so did their
numbers of publications with junior academics publishing more conference papers and fewer
journal papers and their more senior counterparts just the reverse. The influence of (or
citations to) the publications showed that the Web of Science reported almost no citations
while Google Scholar located citations that showed the publications of senior academics
‘significantly’ cited more than those of junior academics.
Regional and international LIS research productivity studies are also increasing. For example,
Åström (2008) used curriculum vitae from the web for faculty members from five Nordic LIS
schools to assess publishing patterns from 1990 to 2005. Using the Web of Science citation
databases, Park (2008) looked at authorship characteristics in over 1,300 publications of 12
countries in Asia and the Pacific region in the top 20 LIS journals from 1967 to 2005;
Australia led in nearly all categories measured (see also the Results and Discussion below).
Patra and Chand (2009) used the Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database
to compare LIS research output in member countries of two associations: seven countries in
the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and ten countries in the
Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In China, SSCI was used to assess LIS
research for publications from 1975 to 2004, but only in journals assigned to the ‘Information
Science & Library Science’ subject category of SSCI. The results showed an increase in the
number of publications as well as an increasing trend to publish in higher impact journals (He
& Wang, 2006).
This brief overview of selected bibliometric studies of research productivity in LIS provides a
background for the present study which uses a list of all LIS educators of one country over 50
years and searches a variety of databases, some not used in any of the previous studies.
Method
As noted in the Introduction, for the present study all 382 Australian LIS educators with more
than two years total service in LIS programs were selected from a comprehensive list of 693
Australian LIS educators in the higher education sector, from 1959 to 2008 (Wilson et al.,
2010). As our interest is only in publications produced by these educators when serving in
LIS programs, their years of employment in programs were also noted.
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
5/23
With respect to the excluded 311 educators with only two or fewer years in LIS programs, we
note that about one-half were lecturers (equivalently, assistant professors), often in part-time
employment, while just over one-quarter were tutors (equivalently, teaching assistants); the
remainder were (mainly managerial) academics in higher positions, adjuncts and unspecified
visitors or guest lecturers. We believe it unlikely that these personnel would have been
engaged in appreciable research through to publication in their short period of service.
Nevertheless, a trial search in the LISA database was performed for these educators; only 20
documents were retrieved, suggesting returns would be too small for the additional search
effort.
Eight databases were used to ensure a reasonably comprehensive coverage of the LIS
literature since the sources indexed in each database vary considerably. The databases may be
grouped as follows (see Appendix):
•
•
•
•
Australian national and LIS subject-specific: Australian Library and Information
Science Abstracts (ALISA).
International and LIS subject-specific: Library and Information Science Abstracts
(LISA), Library Literature and Information Science (LLIS), and Library Information
Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA). The subject coverage of these databases
differs in orientation (Boese, 2000; Read & Smith, 2000). The database Information
Science and Technology Abstracts (ISTA), formerly Information Science Abstracts
(ISA), was not included as it overlaps extensively with LISTA (Jacsó, 2007; Boell,
2010).
Australian national and with broader subject coverage, specifically education
(including aspects of LIS): Australian Education Index (AEI+).
International and with various multidisciplinary subject coverage: Social Sciences
Citation Index (SSCI), the Science Citation Index (SCI), and the Arts and Humanities
Citation Index (AHCI).
Additional databases considered include SCOPUS, a multidisciplinary database, which was
not selected since its coverage of the LIS literature, in general, is limited to post-1995
publications. Other multidisciplinary databases (e.g., INSPEC, ERIC, etc.) may have
retrieved additional publications, but sample searches for a few of the Australian LIS
academics in these did not retrieve additional documents sufficient to warrant searches for all
382 academics (Wilson, 1999; Hood & Wilson, 2001).
Searches for publications were carried out for each of the 382 longer serving LIS educators in
all eight databases. ALISA, LISA, LISTA and AEI+ were searched through the University of
New South Wales Library’s e-resources (www.library.unsw.edu.au). LLIS, SSCI, SCI and
AHCI were searched using Dialog (www.dialog.com), with the three citation indexes
combined using Dialog’s OneSearch feature. Search statements for all educators in all likely
variants of their names were individually designed to suit the ‘author’ fields in each database.
For each educator the results were limited to the first year of service in any LIS program in
Australia up to the last year plus two additional years; the two additional years were included
to cover time lags which generally occur during the publication process. (It should be noted
that these limits may overcount our values of author productivity.) Searches were undertaken
in June 2008 and updated in June 2010 to ensure that all publications through December 2008
were included. Records retrieved were then imported into Refworks (www.refworks.com),
which supports satisfactory import filters for the data format of all eight databases to enable
the unification process.
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
6/23
The separate records downloaded from each database were composed into a unique list of
records with maximum available bibliographic information, both to ensure that records were
correctly selected and for subsequent subject analysis. Where uncertainties still existed as to
the suitability of the record (for example, from confusion of common surnames and initials),
publication lists in curriculum vitae and other e-sources were used to resolve ambiguities.
Records retrieved were for a variety of document types. With the exception of ‘books’ and
‘book chapters’ which are not indexed by SSCI, SCI and AHCI, all document types appear in
all databases. As the focus of the study is on journal articles, it was necessary to exclude
those records not directly related to research per se – such as book reviews, letters, editorials,
etc. These were counted but removed for later analysis, see Table 2. With the exception of
ALISA and some records from LLIS, all databases generally had a document type designation.
The document type for each record was checked and when missing (or obviously incorrect),
it was added to (or corrected). As examples: records with words like ‘conference’,
‘proceedings’ or ‘presented at’ in their titles were assigned the document type ‘conference
materials’; if an item was not published in a journal or by an academic publisher and it had
the words ‘study’ or ‘report’ in the title, it was assigned the document type ‘books’; theses
were sometimes only labelled as such either in the title or the publisher field; finally, if a
record had a volume and an issue given (and it was not a ‘book review’), it was classified as a
‘journal article’. Using this approach it was possible to assign all records a document type.
Results and Discussion
In the process of searching for publications by Australian LIS academics, interesting
information about the selected databases searched was revealed. This information impacts on
the results, and so will be addressed first. Following the discussion on the databases the
productivity of Australian LIS academics is addressed.
Databases
A general summary of the number of records authored or co-authored by 382 Australian LIS
educators in LIS programs for more than two years as reflected in eight databases from 1967
to 2008 is presented in Table 1. Somewhat unexpectedly, the Australian Education Index
(AEI+) retrieved the most records (2,888). However, it also had a substantial number (679) of
subsequently ‘incorrect’ records. The latter is due, in part, to its broad subject coverage of
education and the use of initials rather than full first names in the early years. The
initialization of first names was also the case in LISA resulting in 163 incorrect records. The
three citation databases of Thomson Reuters were the ‘cleanest’ with no replicate entries.
Most likely this consequence is due to the presence of search fields for countries and
institutional affiliations of authors. Of the LIS-specific databases, LLIS retrieved considerably
more records than the others (LISA, LISTA and ALISA in decreasing order); although, as
shown below in Table 2, 61% were book reviews. LISTA had the largest total number (34) of
replicates, due perhaps to the recent creation of the database through the merging of records
from different sources.
Table 1: The number of records retrieved for publications by Australian LIS educators from
each of eight databases, 1967-2008; replicates and incorrect records are indicated.
ALISA
LISA
LISTA
LLIS
AEI+
SSCI
SCI
AHCI
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
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Number of records
retrieved in search
Number of replicates
from
co-authoring by
Australian LIS
academics
Number of replicates
from database error
1386
1837
1411
2182
2888
398
123
43
118
232
155
199
303
52
21
1
1
5
34
14
5
0
0
0
7
163
42
31
679
1
1
2
1260
1437
1180
1938
1901
345
101
40
Number of (other)
incorrect records
Number of unique
correct records
Table 2 presents the number of records retrieved from each database for different document
types. For all databases the most common publications were those appearing in journals
(journal articles, book reviews and miscellaneous journal materials). Other than the
Australian databases, ALISA and AEI+, they account for most of the records indexed by each
database: from 81% for LISTA to 98% for SSCI. However, the databases differed vastly in
their share of book reviews versus other journal materials. In four databases book reviews
accounted for a substantial number of the records retrieved (from 19% in LISTA to 61% in
LLIS), highlighting the preponderance of book reviews written by Australian LIS academics.
Table 2: The number and percentage share of document types in publications by Australian
LIS educators for each of eight databases, 1967-2008.
Journal Articles
ALISA
695
% share in Database
55.2%
LISA
1088
75.7
%
7
139
229
% share in Database
Conference
Materials a
0.6%
9.7%
19.4%
256
79
115
% share in Database
Books b
20.3%
134
5.5%
66
9.7%
66
% share in Database
Book Chapters c
10.6%
156
4.6%
37
5.6%
45
% share in Database
Miscellaneous
Journal Materials d
12.4%
2.6%
3.8%
23
1.2
%
37
1.9
%
37
1.9
%
12
28
89
51
% share in Database
Total number of
records
1.0%
1.9%
7.5%
1260
1437
1180
Book Reviews
LISTA
636
53.9%
LLIS
604
31.2
%
118
6
61.2
%
AEI+
908
47.8
%
SSCI
245
71.0
%
SCI
87
86.1
%
52.5%
13
74
21.4
%
9
15
8.9%
37.5%
506
26.6
%
254
13.4
%
213
11.2
%
8
4
1
2.3%
0
4.0%
0
2.5%
0
0
0
0
7
18
1
3
0.4%
5.2%
1.0%
7.5%
1901
345
101
40
2.6
%
193
8
0.7%
AHCI
21
a
Includes mainly conference abstracts.
Encompasses items at the monographic level: Books, Theses, Reports and Bibliographies.
c
Includes articles in edited monographic collections.
d
Includes, for example, Letters to the editor, Obituaries, Editorial materials and Conference
reviews.
b
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
8/23
The two Australian databases (AEI+ and ALISA) show similar indexing patterns possibly due,
in part, to the overlap of document types indexed: conference materials, books and book
chapters each made up more than 10% of the document types and when combined, about onehalf of all records. In all the other databases, conference materials, books and book chapters
are negligible or non-existent. Thus, the two Australian databases are good sources for nonjournal publications, while LLIS is the database of choice for book reviews. However, journal
articles are generally considered the major vehicles for scholarly publications in LIS and
further analysis will, therefore, focus only on this document type. Conference materials (or
pre-scholarly publications) are generally revised as journal articles after incorporating
feedback from discussions at conferences; while contents of most books and book chapters
(or post-scholarly publications) often have appeared earlier as conference or journal papers.
Although a combination of international and national LIS databases would most likely
retrieve the greater portion of journal publications for most country-oriented productivity
studies, the omission of multidisciplinary databases or closely allied disciplines (e.g.,
education for the Australian context) would do a disservice to LIS academics with
interdisciplinary interests.
The three Thomson Reuters citation databases, particularly SSCI which is used in most of the
North American studies, would uncover only a very small fraction of journal articles by
Australian LIS academics and even fewer still when limited to journals in the subject
category, ‘Library Science & Information Science’ (Park, 2008; Willard et al., 2008).
However, Park’s (2008) authorship study of research productivity in the top 20 of SSCI
‘Library Science & Information Science’ journals in the Asia-Pacific region did show
Australian LIS academic, Wilson, as the most prolific author; University of New South
Wales as the second most productive institution (see also Table 7); and Australia the most
productive country. The retrieval results of the current study have demonstrated that coverage
provided by individual databases is limited, an issue raised in a recent study by Meho and
Sugimoto (2009) when assessing research productivity for smaller ‘entities’ such as journals
and institutions and possibly also for ‘smaller’ countries outside of North America and
Europe.
Journal articles in databases
After the removal of non-journal articles, there were 2,235 unique journal articles authored or
co-authored by at least one Australian LIS academic during the period from 1967 to 2008
(Tables 3a and 3b). Although LIS education in Australian higher education institutions was
established in 1959, journal articles of LIS academics appeared in the eight selected databases
only from 1967 onwards, with modest growth in the 1970s. The 1980s saw remarkable
growth followed by further small increases in the 1990s. Partial explanations of the ‘quiet’
and low-productive period before the 1980s are posited: some of the databases had limited or
non-existent coverage in the early decades of Australian publications; there were few LIS
academics in the early years (1960s) and most were engaged in establishing LIS programs,
thus devoting their time and resources to course development and teaching rather than to
research. Although the 1970s saw a growth in the number of LIS academics in Australian
higher education institutions, most came as practitioners and therefore lacked research
training and exposure to a ‘research culture’ (Whyte, 1984; Wilson et al., 2010).
Up until the 2000s, research and publication was not in the job specifications of all
academics. In some institutions academics may still choose to focus on teaching and
professional engagement, rather than teaching and research. Even as increasing numbers of
Australian LIS academics had PhDs either prior to entering academia or obtained while in
academia, the transition from practitioners to academics was slow (Wilson et al., 2010).
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
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Table 3a: The number of journal articles by Australian LIS educators retrieved from each of
eight databases, and the total number of unique journal articles, in five periods from 19672008; the percentage of total unique articles retrieved in each period by each database is also
shown.
Years
ALIS
A
LISA
LISTA
LLIS
AEI+
SSCI
SCI
AHCI
0
0
0
0
11
10
5.9%
1
0.6%
0
169
57
8.4%
6
0.9%
7
1.0%
680
94
11.5%
30
3.7%
10
1.2%
84
15.0%
50
8.9%
4
0.7%
245
11.0%
87
3.9%
21
0.9%
19671970
0
8
72.7%
3
27.3%
0
19701979
0
128
75.7%
27
16.0%
0
19801989
383
56.3%
305
44.9%
96
14.1%
19901999
293
35.9%
386
47.3%
213
26.1%
20002008
19
3.4%
261
46.7%
297
53.1%
695
31.1%
1088
48.7%
636
28.5%
All years
Total
unique
articles
per
period
106
15.6
%
275
33.7
%
223
39.9
%
604
27.0
%
22
13.0
%
437
64.3
%
271
33.2
%
178
31.8
%
908
40.6
%
816
559
2235
Table 3b: The number and percentage share of journal articles by Australian LIS educators
retrieved from each of eight databases (db), 1967-2008.
No.
articles
% articles
retrieved
from db
No.
articles
unique to
db
% share of
articles
unique to
db
ALISA
LISA
LISTA
LLIS
AEI+
SSCI
SCI
AHCI
All dbs
695
1088
63
6
60
4
908
245
87
21
2235
31.1%
48.7
%
28.5%
27.0
%
40.6
%
11.0
%
3.9%
0.9%
100.0
%
123
358
168
108
293
34
14
12
1110
17.7%
32.9
%
26.4%
17.9
%
32.3
%
13.9
%
16.1
%
57.1
%
49.7%
By combining all eight databases, it becomes evident that no one database, not even LISA
with the highest overall number of journal articles (1,088 – Table 3a), and the highest number
of unique journal articles (358 – Table 3b) retrieved, can provide access to even one-half of
the research output for Australian LIS academics. The other seven databases contributed from
12 to 293 unique journal articles (Table 3b) and comprised the other one-half of the
publication output to provide a reasonably reliable picture of the research productivity of
Australian LIS academics. The two Australian databases (ALISA and AEI+) were
disappointing, not so much for their coverage of national journals, but for their non-coverage
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
10/23
of international journals in which Australian academics published. Further, ALISA shows
only 19 journal articles retrieved from 2000-2008, ceasing in early 2005 (see Appendix).
Table 3a shows that the most productive database in the Australian LIS context was LISA; it
provided most of the journal articles by Australian authors in the 1970s and in the 1980s
when the two Australian databases (AEI+ and ALISA) led in the provision of journal articles
(437 and 383), LISA was not too far behind with 305 journal articles. During the 1990s LISA
took over the lead with 386 journal articles and for the period from 2000 to 2008, it was a
close second with 261 to LISTA’s 297 journal articles. However, past studies of the LISA
database have indicated problems in the allocation of descriptor terms (Hood & Wilson, 1994
) and in the updating of records (Jacsó, 1998).
Another way of showing the advantage of searching a number of different databases is
looking at the distribution of articles over databases. Of the 2,235 journal articles, about 50%
(1,111) were indexed by only one database with a further 24% (545) by two databases; 14%
(304) by three databases; 9% (211) by four; 3% (59) by five. Only five articles appeared in
six databases and no article was indexed by seven or eight databases. Generally, though it
would appear that searching six rather than eight databases is adequate (Hood & Wilson,
2001), there is still the question of ‘which ones’ to search. Prior to searching, it is not clear
which databases will be the least promising. In the Australian LIS context, the least
productive databases were SCI and AHCI as they contributed only 26 journal articles not
found in the other six databases; however, AHCI contributed the highest share of unique
articles (57%, Table 3b).
As the coverage of Australian LIS journal articles varied markedly from database to database
a reasonably comprehensive coverage can only be achieved when multiple databases are
searched. However, even using all the databases may not enable coverage of all publications.
A comparison of the list of journal articles retrieved from the databases for one of the topproducing academics (see Table 7) to the curriculum vita (CV) list of publications on the
web, found discrepancies due to one or more of the selected databases missing an issue of a
journal that they alone regularly indexed, or indeed, found other indexing anomalies (Jacsó,
1998). Productivity analyses using the list of publications in CVs on the web may overcome
incomplete coverage; however, studies using such publication lists are also problematic as
individual preferences of academics range from listing ‘all’ publications to just a selected few
(Åström, 2008). Additionally, some academics in this study pre-date the ‘web era’ or have
left academia.
Journal articles and LIS academics
The distribution of the 2,235 unique articles over all years is displayed in Figure 1 on the left
axis and the number of Australian LIS academics from an earlier study (Wilson et al., 2010)
on the right axis; both distributions display similar trends. A time lag between appointment to
an academic position and year of journal publications is evident from about 1970 until the
mid-1990s, with the time lag much greater in earlier years. The spikes in publishing activity
in 1999 and in 2005-2006 may be related to the various implementations of national research
evaluation programs by the Australian Federal government (see above).
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
11/23
Figure 1: Number of unique journal articles (1967-2008)
authored by 382 longer-serving Australian LIS educators, and the
number of such educators in Australian LIS programs (1959-2008
), per year.
The steady rise of the number of journal articles from 1975 to 1985 may be due, in part to the
introduction and development of the different literature databases during this period and to
the increasing assimilation of Australian LIS academics into the research and publishing
culture of universities (Wilson et al., 2010). The period with the most journal articles by
Australian LIS academics was in the 1990s, following the establishment of the Unified
National System of universities (Dawkins, 1988), when annual publication outputs fluctuated
between 71 and 97 (Figure 1). The decrease between 2000 and 2004 may be explained to a
certain extent by the demise of ALISA (see Appendix). From 1982 to 1996 ALISA averaged
43 journal articles per year (ranging from 32 to 62); however, from 1997 to 2004 the number
of journal articles dropped dramatically to about six per year (ranging from 0 to 21), and none
from 2005 onwards. While ALISA’s contribution was declining from 1997 onward, LISTA
was expanding its coverage of journal articles by Australian LIS academics for an average of
32 per year (ranging from 19 to 50).
The number of journal articles from ALISA also follows the rise and decline from 1982 to
2008 of Australian LIS programs from 16 to 10 and LIS academics from 145 to 58 (Wilson et
al., 2010). In the 1980s and 1990s the number of journal articles indexed by ALISA was the
second highest of all databases with a total of 383 and 293 respectively. A similar decline in
the other Australian database AEI+ was evident, though not as precipitous (Table 3a).
Fortunately for Australian LIS, the three international LIS databases (LISA, LISTA and LLIS)
appear to have continued indexing the major Australian LIS journals from 2000 to 2008, thus
providing adequate coverage of Australian LIS research publications.
The average number of journal articles per academic from 1967 to 2008 is shown in Figure 2.
Although the distribution is highly skewed with 118 (31%) of the 382 LIS academics having
no journal papers indexed in any of the eight databases (see Table 6 below), there is still an
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
12/23
upward trend. Figure 2 has two peaks (1999 and 2005) where the average number of journal
articles per academic is at least one, perhaps corresponding to the Australian Federal
government’s research evaluation proposals mentioned earlier.
Figure 2: Average number of journal articles per LIS educator per year, and
the trend line 1967-2008.
Journal articles and journals
The 2,235 articles were published in 469 different journals with the distribution of articles
over journals greatly skewed: 588 (or 26%) of the journal articles were published in five (1%)
of the journals, while 233 (10%) of the journal articles were published in 233 (50%) different
journals. In other words, Australian LIS academics published in nearly one-half of all
journals only once and over one-quarter of their journal articles were published in only five
national journals (see Table 4).
Table 4 lists the 38 journals with more than ten articles by Australian LIS academics
published from 1967 to 2008 ranked in decreasing order of productivity. As expected the top
two journals are Australia’s national LIS journals published by the Australian Library and
Information Association (www.alia.org.au) and are still ‘active’. A further 16 are also
national journals, nine of which have ceased publication. The list reflects, for the most part,
the actual names of the journals although two are name changes (or ‘continued by’) as in the
journals ranked 6th and 8th (Education for Library and Information Services, Australia and
Education for Librarianship, Australia). These 38 listed journals, including two ‘continued
by’ journals, accounted for over one-half (1,261 or 56%) of all journal articles published by
Australian LIS academics from 1967 to 2008. The 18 national journals are asterisked and
represent 44% (985) of the 2,235 journal articles.
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
13/23
Table 4: Journals with >10 articles each by Australian LIS educators, by decreasing
number of articles per journal, from 1967-2008. Total number of articles = 2235, in 469
journals; number of articles in journals with >10 articles each = 1261 (56.4% of total), in
38 (8.1% of total) journals.
No. of
Rank
Journal name and (years of publication); * denotes national journals article
s
1
* Australian Library Journal (1951─ )
202
2
* Australian Academic & Research Libraries (1970─ )
160
3
* Orana (1965-2005 X)
87
4
* Access (1987─ )
75
5
* LASIE (Library Automated Systems Information Exchange) (1970-2002 X)
64
Education for Library and Information Services, Australia [ELISA]
6
*
46
(continues 8 ELA, 1992-2000 X)
7
* InCite (1980─ )
43
Education for Librarianship, Australia [ELA] (1984-1991 n.c. ctd. by 6
8
*
41
ELISA)
9
* Scan (1982─ )
37
10
* Archives and Manuscripts (1955─ )
32
11= * Australian Library Review (1990-1996 X)
30
11= * Australian School Librarian (1964-1987 X)
30
13
* Cataloguing Australia (1975-1999 X)
29
14
* Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services (1988─ )
28
15
* Australian Special Libraries News (1967-1989 X)
27
16
* Society for Mass Media and Resource Technology Journal (1971-1987 X)
26
17
Education for Information (1983─ )
24
18
Libri: International Journal of Libraries and Information Services (1950─ )
20
19
Scientometrics (1978─ )
18
20= * Australasian College Libraries (1983-1989 X)
17
20=
Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory (1977-1999 n.c.)
17
22
International Library Review (1969-1992 n.c.)
16
23=
Information Processing and Management (1975─ )
15
Journal of Education for Library and Information Science [JELIS] (continues
23=
15
28= JEL, 1984─ )
25=
Emergency Librarian (1973-1998 n.c.)
14
25=
Internet Research (1991─ )
14
27
IFLA Journal (1975─ )
13
28=
Asian Libraries (1991-1999, merger / n.c.)
11
Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin (1970-2004
28= *
11
n.c.)
28=
Electronic Library (1983─ )
11
28=
Information Research (1995─ )
11
Journal of Education for Librarianship [JEL] (1960-1984 n.c. ctd. by 23=
28=
11
JELIS)
28=
Journal of Information Science (1979─ )
11
28=
Journal of the American Society for Information Science (1970-1999 n.c.)
11
28=
Library and Information Science Research (1983─ )
11
28=
Library Trends (1952─ )
11
28=
School Libraries Worldwide (1995─ )
11
28=
School Library Media Quarterly (1981-1997 n.c.)
11
‘─’ denotes the journal is active at the time of writing; ‘X’ denotes the journal ceased
publication in the latter year; ‘n.c.’ indicates the journal underwent a name change in the
latter year – only where the continuing journal is also in the Table is it named. Sources used
include: National Library of Australia catalogue (www.nla.gov.au ), Ulrich’s Periodical
Directory (www.ulrichsweb.com) and WorldCat (www.worldcat.org).
Some of the publishing patterns of Australian LIS academics for the last four decades are
highlighted in the research results. Firstly, nine of the 18 national journals have ceased
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
14/23
publications due to reasons about which only speculation is possible; for example, economic
constraint coupled with the decline of submissions from, inter alia, national information
professionals and LIS academics whose numbers declined sharply from the mid-1990s
(Figure 1) and whose publication inclination might have shifted internationally. Pressure to
publish in highly ranked international journals increased in Australia with the introduction of
the research evaluation exercises in the 2000s. Secondly, four of the most frequently
occurring national journals in Table 4 target school or teacher librarianship (Orana, Access,
Scan and Australian School Librarian) suggesting a substantial contribution to the education
of this sector in Australian LIS programs and, therefore, to research issues in school/teacher
librarianship. In addition, two other international school library journals appear at the end of
Table 4, each with 11 articles by Australian LIS academics. Thirdly, the majority of the
journal titles are ‘library science’ oriented rather than ‘information science’ oriented,
suggesting more library oriented subject areas in which Australian LIS research have focused
from 1967-2008. Fourthly, the preponderance of journal articles in national journals may
suggest that Australian LIS academics were somewhat hesitant to engage in the international
LIS publishing arena, at least in the earlier decades of this study’s time frame. The low
numbers of journal articles retrieved from the three Thomson Reuters citation databases
(SSCI, SCI and AHCI) would support this suggestion (see Table 3a).
Authorship of journal articles
There appears to be a rising trend in collaborative research and publication among Australian
LIS academics as shown in Table 5. However; over all years, most (72%) of the journal
articles are by one author, another 25% by two or three authors, and only about 3% had more
than three authors. Over the entire period, there was an average of 1.4 authors ranging from
one to 16 authors. An authorship study of the top two national journals (Australian Library
Journal and Australian Academic & Research Libraries, Table 4) from 1985 to 1994 showed
that ‘not one of the research articles was the result of international collaboration’ (Rochester,
1997). During the last ten years (1999 to 2008) when the number of LIS academics was
declining (Figure 1), collaboration appeared to be increasing with only 58% of the journal
articles by one author. A similar rising trend for collaboration among LIS academics in
general has been noted (Park, 2008; Yan & Ding, 2009).
Table 5: The number and percentage share of journal articles by Australian LIS
educators by the number of authors per article, in four time periods, 1967-2008; the
mean number of authors in each time period is also shown.
No. of authors /
jnl. article
Number and percentage of journal articles
1967197919891999All years
1978
1988
1998
2008
1
129
88.4%
527
83.5%
577
71.9%
377
57.5%
1610
72.0%
2
11
7.5%
79
12.5%
182
22.7%
163
24.8%
435
19.5%
3
4
2.7%
16
2.5%
31
3.9%
74
11.3%
125
5.6%
4
0
0%
4
0.6%
7
0.9%
27
4.1%
38
1.7%
≥5
2
1.4%
5
0.8%
5
0.6%
15
2.3%
27
1.2%
Total
146
631
802
656
2235
Mean number
of authors
1.21
1.24
1.37
1.72
1.42
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
15/23
Author productivity
Table 6 shows the number of journal articles by LIS academics and the average number of
years in academia based on an earlier study (Wilson et al., 2010). As stated above, 118 (31%)
of the academics had not published any journal articles in journals indexed by the eight
selected databases while in Australian LIS programs, and they served on average seven years
as Australian LIS academics. Another 135 (35%) published from one to five journal articles
only. The remaining 129 (34%) LIS academics contributed the bulk of journal articles for the
years from 1967 to 2008. There was only a weak relationship between the years spent in LIS
programs in Australia and for the number of journal articles published during that time span
for the 382 academics with more than two years in academia.
Table 6: Productivity groupings of 382 educators
(1967-2008), with average number of years of service
in Australian LIS programs (1959-2008).
No. of
journal
articles/
author
No. of
authors
Percenta
ge of
authors
Average no.
of years in
LIS
programs
0
118
30.9%
7
1 to 5
135
35.3%
11
6 to 10
54
14.1%
13
11 to 20
45
11.8%
17
> 20
30
7.9%
17
The 14 most productive LIS academics with 30 or more journal articles are listed in Table 7.
They account for over one-quarter (634) of the total number of journal articles. The years
spent in Australian LIS programs ranged from 6 to 37 with a mean of about 21 years. For the
average number of articles published per year while in an LIS program, Oliver, with the least
number of years in academia outranked the other 13 academics. The first (Clyde) and second
(Todd) ranked academics published primarily in school/teacher librarianship journals
showing a strong relationship with the total number of articles in journals targeting school
libraries (see Table 4); additionally, 79% and 51% respectively of their articles appeared in
the two national databases (ALISA and AEI+). The next three academics tied for third place
and while the first two academics (Gorman and Rochester) had 28% of their publications
indexed in the national databases, the third academic (Wilson) had all publications indexed in
international databases. The other nine academics had from 13% to 60% in either ALISA or
AEI+, suggesting a preponderance of publications in national journals that were indexed in
the two Australian national databases. An analysis of the percentage of articles in national
journals support the database analysis: all but two academics – Wilson (13%) and Gorman
(30%) – had from 57% to 86% in national journals (Table 7).
Related to the number of publications of each of the 14 most productive LIS academics is the
acquisition of PhDs: four were obtained in the 1980s, seven in the 1990s and one in 2007.
Thus nearly all top producers had PhDs; moreover, two of the top five academics obtained
their PhDs in 1981 and the other three in the 1990s. It would appear that research
productivity is related to not only obtaining a PhD, but having it early in one’s academic
career to foster research skills and further scholarly publications. This brief analysis of a few
of the prolific LIS academics in Table 7 hints at the scatter and diversity of subject interest
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
16/23
(within and beyond LIS) and internationality of publications among the Australian LIS
academics from 1967 to 2008.
Table 7 also provides the Australian institutions in which the top-14 academics spent years as
LIS educators. Six of the academics spent from 3 to 21 years at CSU (Charles Sturt
University); however, only Williamson remains at CSU but has a dual appointment with
Monash University. Additionally, seven have spent from 6 to 37 years in only one Australian
institution. Several of the LIS programs have closed during the fifty-year period: Townsville
CAE, U Ballarat, U Canberra, UNSW, Adelaide CAE, UniSA, and U Melbourne. Since the
end of the study period (2008), several new LIS programs have emerged, some in the same
institutions as below: U Canberra and UniSA. (For a current list of the Australian Library and
Information Association accredited courses in LIS, see
www.alia.org.au/education/courses/librarianship.html.)
Table 7: Australian LIS educators from 1959-2008 with ≥ 30 journal articles each, in
decreasing order of the number of articles authored from 1967-2008 while in Australian LIS
programs. The Table also shows their approximate percentage of articles in national journals,
total number of years served in Australian LIS programs, average number of articles per year
of service, and the current name of Institutions served in (see below).
Rank
Name
No.
articles
% articles
in
national
journals
No.
yrs.
in
prog
s.
No.
articles/y
r in
progs.
Australian institutions with LIS programs,
and in parentheses number of years spent
in programs, in sequential order.
1
Clyde, L.A.
72
75%
13
5.5
Townsville CAEa (2); CSU (3); ECU (8)
2
Todd, R.
69
74%
11
6.3
UTS (11)
3=
Gorman, G.E.
47
30%
15
3.1
U Ballarat (2); CSU (13)
3=
Rochester, M.K.
47
68%
28
1.7
U Canberra (20); CSU (8)
3=
Wilson, C.S.
47
13%
27
1.7
UNSW (27)
6=
Henri, S.J.
44
61%
21
2.1
CSU (21)
6=
Nimon, M.P.
44
86%
34
1.3
Adelaide CAEb (10); UniSA (24)
8=
Maguire, C.J.
42
81%
37
1.1
UNSW (37)
8=
Oliver, R.G.
42
71%
6
7.0
ECU (6)
10=
Clayton, P.R.
41
83%
18
2.3
U Canberra (18)
10=
Middleton, M.R.
41
61%
28
1.5
12
Williamson, K.
35
60%
20
1.8
13
Harvey, D.R.
33
70%
18
1.8
UNSW (10); QUT (18)
U Melbourne (7); RMIT U (1);
Monash U / CSU (12)
Monash U (7); ECU (2); CSU (9)
14 Genoni, P.W.
30
57%
16
1.9
CUT (16)
CAE = College of Advanced Education; U = University.
a
Amalgamated with James Cook University (www.jcu.edu.au).
b
Merged with other institutions to form the University of South Australia (UniSA www.unisa.edu.au).
CSU = Charles Sturt University (www.csu.edu.au), ECU = Edith Cowan University (www.ecu.edu.au), UTS =
University of Technology Sydney (www.uts.edu.au), U Ballarat (www.ballarat.edu.au), U Canberra
(www.canberra.edu.au), UNSW = University of New South Wales (www.unsw.edu.au), QUT = Queensland
University of Technology (www.qut.edu.au ), U Melbourne (www.unimelb.edu.au), RMIT U = Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology University (www.rmit.edu.au), Monash U (www.monash.edu.au ), CUT =
Curtin University of Technology (www.curtin.edu.au).
Conclusion
This study investigated the research productivity of Australian LIS academics over a fiftyyear period (1959 to 2008) as reflected in eight selected databases indexing literature
pertaining to LIS to varying degrees. Searches were implemented using all the variant names
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
17/23
of each of 382 LIS academics with more than two years in Australian LIS programs, and
publication surrogates were downloaded for analysis.
An interesting and useful product of the research was the information revealed about the
databases in which Australian LIS research is indexed. Analysis of the results showed that
few publications by Australian LIS academics were retrieved prior to 1980. Therefore,
initiatives covering LIS publications pre-1980, such as, H. W. Wilson’s Library Literature &
Information Science Retrospective (www.hwwilson.com/databases/liblit_retro.htm) extending
coverage back to 1905, are welcomed additions to the LIS literature databases. The coverage
of Australian LIS publications varied markedly from database to database and a reasonably
comprehensive coverage can be achieved when multiple databases are searched. Results of
this study support the claim that research evaluation based on just one database (for example,
LISA) or even a group of databases covering ‘all’ of knowledge, such as the three Thomson
Reuters citation databases, will invariably miss a significant number of publications and,
therefore, may draw incomplete conclusions. This was certainly the case with the Australian
LIS academic cohort.
Moreover, the choice of a specific database for research evaluation, as for example Scopus
for the 2010 ERA (www.arc.gov.au/era), will inevitably favor publications from specific
subject disciplines, while being less favorable to other disciplines. At least in this study, it
could be argued that while, for instance, the Thomson Reuters citation databases might
provide sufficient coverage for some disciplines; this was not the case for LIS in an
Australian context. Most likely disciplines where research is based on considerable
international collaboration are better represented in large multidisciplinary databases than
disciplines where research is more locally focussed as with Australian LIS. Furthermore, as
the Australian LIS-specific database ALISA ceased in 2005, there is only the more general
education database, AEI+ covering Australian aspects of LIS research publications. Byrne
(1983) pointed out nearly three decades ago that Australian research is in danger of being
‘lost’ or remain ‘invisible’; this is still a possibility for LIS research publications. Alternately,
Australian LIS educators need to publish in international journals (indexed in international
databases) to gain visibility in the global research arena; since 2000, this practice has been
increasing.
Other characteristics of the research output of Australian LIS academics found in this study
include: (1) the relative dominance of journal material (articles and book reviews) with a
mean of over 80% across databases, indicating the importance of journals in Australian LIS
research productivity; (2) an increase in the average number of authors of journal articles
over the years pointing to an increase in research collaboration; (3) a heavily skewed
productivity distribution with nearly one-third of longer-serving academics producing no
journal articles in the databases searched and a small number of longer-serving academics
authoring or co-authoring over one-fourth of all the journal articles; (4) an overwhelming
share of journal articles from national rather than international journals; and (5) a number of
the prolific journals (as well as prolific educators) related to school or teacher librarianship.
In common with earlier LIS productivity studies of North American academics, this study
reveals increases in research productivity over time, suggesting increases in academic
effectiveness, in research output at least. Looking at the increase in publications, it becomes
apparent that Australian LIS, like its contemporaries in LIS elsewhere, is maturing as a field
of study and developing a larger body of research. Although research productivity is only one
measure of faculty effectiveness, it is a necessary one. The production and publication of
research helps the profession establish its foundations. Furthermore, the academization of
Australian LIS educators has made solid gains through a firmly based tradition of
scholarship.
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
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Future research will look more closely at the profiles of the different LIS programs
throughout the fifty-year period. Additionally, the subject-related variables of the 2,235
journal articles will be analyzed to provide insight into the development of LIS research
topics in Australia over time.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the John Metcalfe Memorial Fund for financial assistance for
Dr. Willard and Mr. Boell, and for Dr. Kennan while at the University of New South Wales.
We also thank the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) for documentation
support.
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Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
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Appendix: Characteristics of eight databases used to search for publications by
Australian LIS educators.
Database
Code
ALISA
LISA
LISTA
LLIS
Full Database Name
Australian Library
and Information Science
Abstracts
Library and Information
Science Abstracts
Library, Information
Science and Technology
Abstracts
Library Literature and
Information Science
(formerly, Library
Literature)
Time frame
from which
records were
retrieved *
Database size:
total number
of records in
time frame
Database subject scope;
National (Australian) or
International coverage
1975-2005
11,537
LIS; National
1966-2008
315,910
LIS; International
1959-2008
1,210,296
LIS; International
1979-2008
335,373
LIS; International
AEI+
Australian Education Index
1959-2008
174,621
Education (including LIS);
National
SSCI
Social Sciences Citation
Index
1972-2008
4,862,843
Social sciences; International
SCI
Science Citation Index
1974-2008
28,201,171
AHCI
Arts & Humanities
Citation Index
1980-2008
3,263,533
Science, technology,
engineering and medicine;
International
Arts and humanities;
International
*
Databases were searched either from 1959 or from the initial year of the
database, to 2008 or in the case of ALISA to its cessation in April 2005. Journal
articles by Australian LIS educators were retrieved from 1967 to 2008.
Prepring of: Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2012).
Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Research productivity and visibility of LIS educators in higher
education institutions. Journal of Education in Library and Information Science. 53(1). 49-68.
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