Abstract
The purpose of this work in progress is to quantify the amount of attention given to questions of racial inequity experienced by BIPOC in LIS research. We find that despite a recent surge in BIPOC-related research output, the publications are low in numbers and tend to receive fewer citations than other work in the same research area. BIPOC-related research is present but unevenly distributed across several areas of the field. These trends may help create and sustain momentum towards addressing the persistent lack of diversity and equity in LIS.
Highlights
As a field in which 87% of the workforce is reported to be white (Schmidt, 2019), there is a strong need for Library and Information Science (LIS) to collectively examine how cultural, social, and political biases manifest in research literature
In examining specific groups mentioned within our dataset of LIS literature, research relevant to Black and Indigenous people is dominant
While the yearly output of BIPOC-relevant articles has more than doubled in both raw and relative terms since the 1990s, the overall share of BIPOC-related research in LIS remains low enough to suggest that considerations of race and racial inequity remain largely ignored by the field
Summary
As a field in which 87% of the workforce is reported to be white (Schmidt, 2019), there is a strong need for Library and Information Science (LIS) to collectively examine how cultural, social, and political biases manifest in research literature. Racialized and critical LIS scholars have identified the need to adopt a critically focused social justice research agenda amid continuing struggles to reflect and include racialized communities in LIS research and practice (Espinal, 2001; Espinal et al, 2018; Hathcock, 2015; Honma, 2005; Hudson, 2017a; Gibson et al, 2020; Matthews, 2020). The lack of racialized perspectives and approaches in LIS scholarship and practice reflect larger societal practices of marginalization (Cooke & Sweeney, 2017; Schmidt, 2019; Adler, 2017; Gibson et al, 2020; Pawley, 2006)
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