The Affiliations of U.S. Academic Librarians in the Most Prominent Journals of Science, Engineering, Agricultural, and Medical Librarianship, 2000–2010

Abstract

After reviewing the literature of the differing approaches to evaluating the output of academic librarians and ranking their employing universities, the authors adapted features of the most widely cited study, Stephen J. Wiberley, Julie M. Hurd, and Ann C. Weller 2006 (WHW 2006), which covers a wide assortment of journals, to compile instead the affiliations of college and university authors in articles published between 2000–2010 in the journals most favored by American science, engineering, medical, and agricultural librarians. These journals included Science and Technology Libraries, Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Journal of Agricultural and Food Information, Journal of the Medical Library Association, and Medical Reference Services Quarterly. Unlike many previous studies, it emphasizes the number of papers published, not the number of librarians it took to write them. The study demonstrates that the WHW 2006 top twenty did rather well in this more narrowly focused science-oriented journal assortment over this timespan. Furthermore, while a statistically significant number of schools that happened to have graduate programs in library and information science (LIS) on their campuses were notable for their output in these journals, LIS faculty publishing was not a significant factor in their attaining a high ranking in this study, as shown by the thirty-eight of the forty-five ranking schools providing faculty status for academic librarians.