SLIS Faculty News
SLIS Ranked #1 in the Nation for Scholarly Productivity
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Indiana University's (IU) School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) has been ranked #1 in the nation in terms of faculty and program productivity for the second successive time. A study by Denice Adkins and John Budd, based on publication and citation data for the years 1999 to 2004, placed SLIS well above the nearest contender (see Table 8, 2006, below). In an earlier, similar study by Budd, covering the period 1993-1998, SLIS also ranked #1 overall (see Table 8, 2000, below).
"Scholarly productivity of U.S. LIS faculty," which will appear in a forthcoming issue of Library & Information Science Research, demonstrates again the productivity and intellectual influence of SLIS faculty: two of the top-ten most widely published and most highly cited faculty members in the current study came from IU. This, of course, is good news for SLIS students, since professors who are actively engaged in scholarship and cutting-edge research have so much more to bring to the classroom.
Said Dean Blaise Cronin: "When U.S. News & World Report published its latest rankings of Library and Information Studies programs in March 2006, SLIS was ranked #7, tied with the University of Texas at Austin. Here's what I had to say at the time: 'Objectively, we should be rated a notch or two higher than seven, but the reality is that U.S. News & World Report rankings are entirely subjective in character.' The results of the Adkins and Budd study merely underscore my point: rankings based on subjective impressions rather than metrics are suspect. For example, Texas-Austin, a peer program if USN&WR is to be believed, does not even appear in the list of the top-20 schools when objective measures of scholarly performance are used. If we are going to rank programs and people, the very least we can do is ensure that the criteria we employ are both valid and consistently applied."
The full-text (2006) article is available online through Science Direct. The Indiana University Libraries subscribes to this service - (select Science Direct from the Databases A-Z page).
For more on SLIS's research activities, see http://www.slis.indiana.edu/research/
2006 Study
Table 8
Cumulative ranking of programs
| Rank | Program | Points |
| 1 | Indiana | 70 |
| 2 | Rutgers | 64 |
| 3 | Tennessee | 62 |
| 4 | UCLA | 61.5 |
| 5 | North Carolina | 61 |
| 6 | Illinois | 52.5 |
| 7(T) | Missouri | 46 |
| 7(T) | Syracuse | 46 |
| 9 | Washington | 44.5 |
| 10 | Michigan | 44 |
2000 Study
Table 8
Cumulative ranking of programs
| Rank | Program | Points |
| 1 | Indiana | 59.5 |
| 2 | Illinois | 54.5 |
| 3 | North Carolina | 52.5 |
| 4 | Rutgers | 50.5 |
| 5 | UCLA | 45.5 |
| 6 | UC Berkeley | 39 |
| 7 | Michigan | 36 |
| 8 | Simmons | 33.5 |
| 9 | Maryland | 33 |
| 10 | Tennessee | 30 |
2006 Study
Adkins, D., & Budd, J. (2006). Scholarly productivity of U.S. LIS faculty. Library & Information Science Research, 28, 374-389.
2000 Study
Budd, J. M. (2000). Scholarly productivity of U.S. LIS faculty: An update. The Library Quarterly, 70(2), 230-245.
Related SLIS News Stories:
- SLIS Ranked in Top Ten by U.S. News & World Report
- High Impact of IU Library and Information Science Publications
- "SLIS, its dean and faculty earn top honors" (IU Media Relations Press Release, 9/15/06)
Photo Caption: Blaise Cronin at Trinity College, University of Oxford
Posted Sept. 7, 2006
