A bibliometric study of authorship characteristics in four international information science journals

Authorship characteristics in four major information science journals were examined to determine the details of their authors, such as sex occupation, affiliation, geographic distribution, and institutional affiliation. A total of 163 articles written by 294 authors were analyzed. Findings indicate that males (206 or 70.0%) publish 3.0 times more compared to females (69 or 23.5%), and the school of library and information science contributed the most male (39 or 78%), and female (11 or 22%) authors. Maximum number of authors (148 or 50.3%) were located in the U.S.A. with the Midwest (37 or 25.0%) region claiming the largest share. Academic libraries (110 or 37.4%) account for the major share of publication. Thirteen library and information science schools from the U.S.A. contributed 32 authors (50.0%). Assistant professors (25 or 39.1%) publish the most in library schools. Male library and information science school authors publish 1.6 times more in comparison to their female counterpart.