Collaboration in information and library science doctoral education

Coauthorship is increasing across all areas of scholarship. Despite this trend, dissertations as sole-authored monographs are still revered as the cornerstone of doctoral education. As students learn the norms and communicative behaviors of their field during their doctoral education, do they also learn collaborative behaviors? This study investigated this issue through triangulation of 30 interviews, 215 questionnaires, and bibliometric analyses of 97 CVs in the field of library and information science (LIS). The findings demonstrate that collaboration occurs in about half of advisee/advisor relationships and is primarily understood as research dissemination outside the dissertation. Respondents reported that the dissertation was not and should not be considered a collaborative product. The discussion also includes a commentary about grant funding and the implications for this on models of academic scholarship and research production.