Minding the gap: Bibliometric equity in theology and religious studies

Abstract

The scholarly communications ecosystem in theology and religious studies differs significantly from other disciplines. In this paper, we draw on a multi-year investigation at Vanderbilt University as well as a practitioner’s perspective at the Center of Theological Inquiry to document the extent to which existing bibliometric tools fail to capture the full scholarly output of scholars in these subdisciplines. After presenting our findings, we express hope that open-source and crowdsourced bibliometric initiatives based on linked data principles may help to correct existing imbalances and lead toward a more equitable representation of scholarly works in the field of theology and religious studies.