Examination of correlates of H-index as a measure of research productivity for library and information science faculty in the United States and Canada

Abstract

This research analyzes research productivity among Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty based on number of publications and citations throughout the careers of tenure-track and tenured professors in LIS schools with an American Library Association-accredited Master of LIS program. The h-index is examined as a representative measure of LIS faculty output using a regression analysis. Based on observed variance in h-index and other research productivity measures across LIS schools, a regression is conducted based on several variables that distinguish these schools: Research 1 status, proportion of faculty who are full professors, where the university is located, whether the LIS school has a Ph.D. program, and whether the school is a member of the iSchool consortium. Findings indicate that h-index effectively represents the relative number of publications and citations a professor has while mitigating the impact of a few highly-cited publications that are not representative of an entire body of work. In addition to Research 1 status and proportion of full professors, iSchool membership is identified as a factor that influences a LIS school’s h-index vale. These findings have relevance to LIS readers interested in analyzing productivity of individual researchers and schools, researchers interested in the measurement of the effect of the h-index value on evaluating research productivity, and readers interested in the impact of the iSchool movement on research in LIS.