The Research-Practice Gap in Library and Information Science in Turkey: An Analysis of Authorship and Collaboration within the Scope of the Articles

Purpose: The research-practice gap emphasizes the low participation rate of practitioners in research processes and the lack of collaboration between researchers and practitioners. This paper aims to determine the practitioner contribution to research, researcher-practitioner collaboration and, depending on these, whether there is a research-practice gap through two important Library and Information Science (LIS) journals in Turkey. Method: The data of the study were collected from peer-reviewed articles published in Turkish Librarianship and Information World journals. According to the article's author information, author profiles were created and categorized based on their profiles. These categories, which were determined as researchers, practitioners, students, and others, were analyzed and evaluated in the context of article authorship of practitioners and collaboration between researchers and practitioners. The research data of this study is open to access. Findings: Approximately 16% of the articles were published with the contribution of at least one practitioner. Approximately 10% of the total number of authors (845) were practitioners. The principal author groups of both journals are researchers in academic departments. Academic librarians were practitioners who published the most significant number of articles (10.53%). The contributions of practitioners working in libraries other than academic libraries to the literature were limited (2.98%). While the percentage of articles in which all researchers and practitioners collaborated was 9.74%, the percentage of articles in which LIS researchers and practitioners collaborated was 8.34%. The result of this study shows that KB researchers collaborated with academic librarians working at their universities in six publications (1.19%). In addition, it was found that practitioners collaborated in three (0.6%) publications and with researchers from different scientific fields in 10 publications (1.98%). Implications: The findings of this study show that there is a gap between research and practice in Turkey in terms of article authorship and collaboration. It is expected that this study, which deals with the subject based on evidence, to raise awareness about the participation of practitioners in research processes and the development of research collaborations. In addition, it is expected that the findings of this study will be extended by studies with different methods and scopes. Originality: In Turkey, there is a deficiency of current studies that directly address practitioner contribution and researcher-practitioner collaboration in publications based on evidence. This research aims to determine the existence of the gap between research and practice and fill the literature gap in our country.