Women and men in library and information science scholarship: Authorship trends from 2003 to 2021

Abstract

Library and information science (LIS) has long consisted of more women than men, at least in sheer numbers of library employees, but men are the primary authors of library literature. This study explores LIS literature published between 2003 and 2021 to identify if there are differences in the publishing patterns of women and men. The authors used content analysis to code the entire sample to identify overall subject trends after authors were categorized as women or men by mainly automated methods, using two R packages, genderize and ssa. The results show that there are overall inequities when compared to the profession as whole between the publishing rates of women and men in LIS, as well as differences in publication patterns by subjects and within specific journals. Shifts in subjects over the period under investigation did not increase the percentage of women publishing in the selected LIS journals. The authors conclude more research needs to be conducted to determine the cause of inequities in publishing not just among women and men, but all underrepresented voices in LIS.