A Question of Quality: How Authors and Editors Perceive Library Literature

Abstract

Librarians with faculty status are expected to do research and publish just as their teaching colleagues do. But unlike teaching faculty, most librarians have neither flexible work schedules nor nine-month contracts that are conducive to ongoing research and publication. This means that the requirement to publish in order to be a successful academic often competes with the requirement to perform daily work in order to be a successful librarian. One of the reasons the authors undertook this study was to examine whether the pressure to publish on most academic librarians has an impact on the quality of the literature appearing in library journals. Authors and editors of twenty-two library journals were surveyed to see how both sides of the publishing equation feel about the quality of their end product. This study reveals interesting findings about both editors and authors of library literature, and concludes with suggestions for improving the publishing process.