A bibliometric analysis of race-related research in LIS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This special issue on race relations and racial inequity in Library and Information Science (LIS) is a response a recent wave of advocacy, activism, and protests. Its explicit purpose is to address the lack of research on race and inequity within our field. The purpose of this contribution to the issue is to substantiate that statement by performing a bibliometric analysis of the last 40 years of LIS scholarship to quantify the amount of attention given to race and racial inequality over that period. We find that despite an important increase in BIPOC-related research in LIS, the numbers remain quite low with approximately 2% of LIS publications containing terms related to racial inequality and BIPOC communities, and this research also tends to be less cited than the average LIS papers in the same area. We also find that this research is present in several areas of the field, although unevenly distributed across them. The trends presented in this paper may help when discussing sensitive issues regarding systematic discrimination, help create and sustain momentum towards change, and address the persistent lack of diverse perspectives and approaches across LIS scholarship and practice.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | Bibliometrics Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | low |
| gpt | Bibliometrics Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Other design | high |
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.062 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.162 | 0.249 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".