Gender and scholarly communication : a bibliometric study of American library science

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the relationship between the socially constructed genders is manifested in American library science. To visualize gender, bibliometric analyses of peer reviewed articles published in three core journals of library science between 1980 and 2000 inclusive, are performed. The three journals are: College and Research Libraries, Journal of Academic Librarianship and Library Quarterly. Questions: 1. Does gender affect the publishing process regarding the distribution of female and male authors? 2. Does gender influence female and male authors' choice of references? 3. Does gender affect the share of citations received by works of women and men respectively? 4. Does gender influence collaboration regarding the distribution of co-authoring female and male authors? The bibliometric analyses indicate differences between the shares of female and male authors, as well as differences in the attention women and men give to and receive from other female and male authors respectively. It is assumed that there exists a gender contract an implicit agreement of how men and women are expected to behave towards each other which is renegotiated during the period of time of this study, seemingly to the benefit of female authors as they are given a larger space in publishing. But concerning citations there is a delay in regard to male authors' tendency to cite works by women. This might indicate that the importance of gender has not diminished but become more subtle and complex. The conclusion is that gender indeed influences publishing, referencing, citation and collaboration processes of library science.Uppsatsnivå: