Journal article
Understanding the evolving academic landscape of library and information science through faculty hiring data
Scientometrics, v 108(3), pp 1461-1478
Sep 2016
Abstract
Using a 40-year (from 1975 to 2015) hiring dataset of 642 library and Information science (LIS) faculty members from 44 US universities, this research reveals the disciplinary characteristics of LIS through several key aspects including gender, rank, country, university, major, and research area. Results show that genders and ranks among LIS faculty members are evenly distributed; geographically, more than 90 % of LIS faculty members received doctoral degrees in the US; meanwhile, 60 % of LIS faculty received Ph.D. in LIS, followed by Computer Science and Education; in regards to research interests, Human–Computer interaction, Digital Librarianship, Knowledge Organization and Management, and Information Behavior are the most popular research areas among LIS faculty members. Through a series of dynamic analyses, this study shows that the educational background of LIS faculty members is becoming increasingly diverse; in addition, research areas such as Human–Computer interaction, Social Network Analysis, Services for Children and Youth, Information Literacy, Information Ethics and Policy, and Data and Text Mining, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning have received an increasing popularity. Predictive analyses are performed to discover trends on majors and research areas. Results show that the growth rate of LIS faculty members is linearly distributed. In addition, among faculty member’s Ph.D. majors, the share of LIS is decreasing while that the share of Computer Science is growing; among faculty members’ research areas, the share of Human–Computer interaction is on the rise.
Metrics
Details
- Title
- Understanding the evolving academic landscape of library and information science through faculty hiring data
- Creators
- Yongjun Zhu - College of Computing and Informatics Drexel University 3141 Chestnut Street Philadelphia PA 19104 USAErjia Yan - College of Computing and Informatics Drexel University 3141 Chestnut Street Philadelphia PA 19104 USAMin Song - Department of Library and Information Science Yonsei University 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu Seoul 03722 Republic of Korea
- Publication Details
- Scientometrics, v 108(3), pp 1461-1478
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands; Dordrecht
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Information Science
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000382914200026
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84976320561
- Other Identifier
- 991014976891804721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
- Information Science & Library Science