Objective – To compare the characteristics of authors publishing in open access and non-open access library and information science (LIS) journals.

Design – Comparative analysis of published journal articles.

Setting – Academic journals.

Subjects – Articles published in selected LIS journals between 2008-2013.

Methods – Journals included in the Library Science and Information Science category in the 2012 edition of Journal Citation Reports and those listed in the Library and Information Science category of the Directory of Open Access Journals as of May 2013 were included in the analysis. Articles were examined and coded for author occupation, academic rank, and type of collaboration.

Main Results – The author analyzed 1,807 articles from 20 open access journals and 1,665 articles from 13 non-open access journals. An unknown number of articles were excluded because they lacked required author information. Over half (53.9%) of the authors who published in the open access journals were practitioners. Over half (58.1%) of the authors who published in the non-open access journals were academics. Librarian-librarian collaboration was the most common type (38.6%) of collaboration found in the open access journals. Academic-academic collaboration was the most common type (34.1%) of collaboration found in the non-open access journals. Collaboration between librarians and academics was seen in 20.5% of open access articles and 13.2% of non-open access articles.

Conclusion – In general, librarian-authored research was found more often in open access journals, while the “latest research topics and ideas” (p. 14) were found most often in non-open access journals.