RESEARCH COLLABORATION AMONG LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE SCHOOLS IN SOUTH AFRICA (1991–2012): AN INFORMETRICS STUDY

Abstract

This study sought to assess the extent of research collaboration in Library and Information Science (LIS) schools in South Africa between 1991 and 2012. Informetric research techniques were used to obtain relevant data for the study. The data was extracted from two EBSCO-hosted databases, namely, Library and Information Science Source (LISS) and Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA). The search was limited to scholarly peer reviewed articles published between 1991 and 2012. The data was analysed using Microsoft Excel ©2010 and UCINET for Windows ©2002 software packages. The findings revealed that research collaboration in LIS schools in South Africa has increased over the past two decades and mainly occurred between colleagues from the same department and institution; there were also collaborative activities at other levels, such as inter-institutional and inter-country, although to a limited extent; differences were noticeable when ranking authors according to different computations of their collaborative contributions; and educator-practitioner collaboration was rare. Several conclusions and recommendations based on the findings are offered in the article.