Publication Trends of LIS Faculty Teaching Health-Related Courses

Background and Objectives: Bibliometrics studies of faculty scholarly output in multiple disciplines have been performed; however, the publication characteristics of Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty teaching health courses have not been analyzed and reported. The purpose of this bibliometric analysis was to examine publication patterns (2011-present) of full-time LIS faculty that teach health-related courses for library science programs in the United States and Canada.

Methods: Full-time LIS faculty teaching health-related courses in American Library Association (ALA) accredited programs were identified through several approaches: searching course listings, faculty profiles and syllabi from ALA-accredited School websites, and contacting Deans and Directors of Schools. As a result of this process, 29 LIS faculty were identified and met the inclusion criteria comprising the study sample. In September 2021, the 29 faculty members were contacted via email and invited to voluntarily share their curriculum vitaes (CVs) for analysis. A total of 16 respondents provided their CVs representing a 55% response rate. This was supplemented by locating any additional CVs publicly available online for those faculty that did not respond, adding five CVs to the study sample and resulting in a final sample of 21 (N=21). Publication information (2011-present) was collected from the CVs of 21 faculty and analyzed by the research team using descriptive bibliometrics.


Results: This bibliometric analysis resulted in the identification of several patterns and trends. Faculty published in a range of LIS and interdisciplinary journals. The top five journals for peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed publications were: Medical Reference Services Quarterly, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Journal of the Medical Library Association, and Biomedical Informatics. Journal articles were the most popular venue, followed by published conference proceedings. Joint authorship patterns were the most common, highlighting the collaborative nature of research. Finally, highly cited papers appeared in health-specific journals reaching broader audiences (e.g., Health Psychology, Frontiers in Public Health)..

Conclusions: Insight and implications pertaining to LIS education, practice, and knowledge dissemination will be presented. Future research should explore publications authored by adjuncts and faculty in other departments teaching health-related courses in MLIS programs. Additionally, an examination of research topics would be useful. This study represents the first step in examining the research output for this LIS community of scholars.