There was a gradual transition from single-authored papers to collaborative papers in the 20th century, especially in science subjects. The trend caught up with LIS papers as well in late 20th century. With the passage of time, collaboration took various forms, which outlined. The chapter is based on more than 600 publications of which 341 were covered in Bibliography on Work-Flow in Libraries (1966) and the rest published in National Conference on Advances in Knowledge Management –NCAKM’10 - Proceedings (2010), Proceedings of the 9th Annual National Convention of MANLIBNET on Business and Management Librarianship (2008), Proceedings of the 11th Annual National Convention of MANLIBNET on Trends and Challenges in Management in Corporate Libraries in Digital Era (2010), and Proceedings of the National Conference on ICT Impact on Knowledge and Information Management (2010). The earliest collaborative papers found in this study are from 1941. The collaborative papers published from 2008-2010 accounted for 68.6% of the total and filled on average 6.3 pages. A predominance of inter-organizational cooperation in the generation of papers is observed in the study. There is hardly any international cooperation for producing LIS papers.
TopObjectives
The objectives of the paper are
- 1.
To find out the extent of collaborative papers in the field of library and information science in the 21st century generating from India at present;
- 2.
To examine the types of collaboration, i.e. inter-organizational, intra-organizational, and international;
- 3.
To measure the average length of papers.
TopLiterature In The 21St Century
It has been noticed that in India collaborative papers are mainly published in journals, conference proceedings, and festschrift volumes. The bibliographical control of conference documents and festschrift volumes being poor, and their unavailability in libraries make it almost impossible to project the real scenario. Indian Library Science Abstracts 2000-2005 has tried to cover the literature to the extent possible (IASLIC, 2007). The coverage may be around 70 to 80 percent. Basing this source, an idea is being given about the collaborative literature. It is to be noted that Indian Library Science Abstracts 2006-2010 is under compilation and to be published in 2013.
Indian Library Science Abstracts 2000-2005 includes 3,130 abstracts. Of which 1310 are collaborative papers, slightly above 41.5 percent. Indian Library Science Abstracts 2006-2010 is also having around 3,000 entries. A sample study shows that the percentage of collaborative papers is likely to be higher than 42 percent.
TopTypes Of Collaboration
With the passage of time various types of collaboration have evolved. A glimpse of the same is being provided.
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Invisible Collaboration: In this type of collaboration, the name or names of the collaborators do not find a mention in the work. The work goes in the name of the guru, leader, boss, senior, etc as was the case in the society founded by Pythagoras. Even today the phenomenon of invisible collaboration is not uncommon.
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Visible collaboration: In this type of collaboration, the name of the leader and all the collaborators appear in the work. This is the most predominant form of collaboration in the world. An example is given below.
Manoj Singh; Tara Ashok; Nabar, Geeta; Rane, Madhuri; and Vijai Kumar. A report on the development of a typical knowledge node. National Seminar of IASLIC, 19th, 2000, Bhopal: Library and Information Profession at the Crossroads-Papers. Calcutta: Iaslic 2000. 275-282
Here all the five authors who have collaborated have figured in the paper.