Academic impact of articles by practitioners in the field of library and information science

Abstract

This study measured the relative academic impact of articles by LIS practitioners by analyzing library and information science articles published between 2005 and 2014. The results revealed that, although practitioners were not the main knowledge contributors, the academic impact of articles by practitioners was not significantly lower than that of articles by academics. No significant differences in academic impact were present between any two types of coauthored articles. Articles from academic-practitioner collaboration were cited earlier than articles from practitioner-practitioner and academic-academic collaborations. This study suggests that LIS practitioners appear to benefit from collaborative scholarship with LIS researchers through more citations and higher impact.