Publication and citation analysis of disciplinary connections of library and information science faculty in accredited schools

Multidisciplinarity of LIS faculty is one the prominent trends in LIS education. 37% of faculty members in ALA accredited programs hold advanced degrees in disciplines other than LIS. Little is known about the role these migrants from other fields of study play in LIS research and education. This study strives to fill in this gap by analyzing publication and citation patterns of LIS faculty using citation analysis as a primary method and the Thomson Scientific Web of Knowledge as a main data source. The findings lead to the conclusion that LIS schools' faculty members with non-LIS doctorates do maintain stronger connections with other disciplines than their colleagues with LIS doctorates. They publish more often in journals from other disciplines and get cited more often by scholars from other fields of study. At the same time, faculty with non-LIS doctorates are active in LIS research as well. Significant fractions of their works are published in LIS journals and they get cited often in LIS scholarly periodicals. Thirty six percent of faculty with non-LIS doctorates hold a Master's degree in LIS. They maintain less strong connections with other disciplines than those faculty who hold neither a doctorate nor a Master's degree in LIS. Faculty with LIS doctorates also maintain connections with other disciplines. Not as much as faculty with non-LIS doctorates, but they publish in non-LIS periodicals and receive citations from scholars in other disciplines. The field of LIS has connections with a wide variety of disciplines. Disciplines of doctorates of LIS educators represent a wide variety of knowledge domains with prevalence of professional fields, social sciences, humanities, and computer science. Faculty members with either LIS or non-LIS doctorates receive citations from all major knowledge domains. This might signify "exporting" qualities of LIS as a discipline. The presence of faculty with non-LIS doctorates has a noticeable impact on the level of multidisciplinarity of the schools' research production. The ratio between faculty with LIS and non-LIS doctorates is a less significant factor than the actual number of faculty members with non-LIS doctorates in regard to multidisciplinarity of schools' publications and citations to them.