Publication patterns of U.S. academic librarians from 1998 to 2002

This study examines the contributions of U.S. academic librarians to the peer-reviewed literature of library and information science (LIS). Compared to the authors’ study of 32 journals for 1993-1997, the present study finds that for 1998-2002, there were declines in the total number of refereed articles (almost 4%), number of refereed articles by academic librarians (almost 13%), proportion of refereed articles by academic librarians (just over 4%), proportion of academic librarian authors (almost 3%), and proportion of co-authored articles by academic librarians (almost 4%). Because different factors influence rates of authorship in a given set of journals and these rates tend to fluctuate in the short term, only further investigation can assess whether the declines are momentary or the start of a trend. Approximately 7% of academic librarians wrote 3 or more articles. The 20 most productive libraries published more than 10% of all refereed articles in the 32 journals and nearly one-third of the articles by academic librarians.