Emerging landscapes of "alternative-academic" careers in library and information science: Evolutionary patterns and prospects in the Chinese context

The paper examines the rise of alternative-academic (Alt-Ac) careers in library and information science (LIS), defined as career paths requiring or benefiting from doctoral training but extending beyond traditional tenure-track roles. Motivated by shifts from Mode 1 to Mode 2 knowledge production, rapid digital technological advances, and LIS’s expanding interdisciplinary scope, the study focuses on China, where LIS doctoral programs nearly doubled (10 in 2016 to 19 in 2023) and the discipline was restructured as Information Resource Management in 2022. The purpose is to provide a holistic, context-aware understanding of Alt-Ac roles within China’s LIS ecosystem using large-scale text mining of job postings. Research questions: (1) What Alt-Ac position types exist and how are they institutionally distributed? (2) What evolutionary trends and competency differences characterize these roles over time? (3) How does the rise of Alt-Ac affect the academic labor market and reshape knowledge production in LIS?

The term Alt-Ac, coined around 2010, initially described humanities and social science PhDs in non-traditional academic institutions and has since broadened to include roles bridging academia and industry, emphasizing practical knowledge application, social service, and cross-boundary collaboration. Prior work documents motivations, experiences, competencies, and growth/diversification of Alt-Ac, though definitions vary from narrow (non-tenure roles within universities) to broad, cross-sectoral interpretations. Structural drivers include Mode 2 knowledge production, expanded doctoral education, and demand for versatile doctoral talent, with universities increasingly supporting Alt-Ac preparation. Recent contributions offer field-specific guidance (e.g., quantitative social sciences), professionalization strategies for humanities PhDs, and autobiographical reflections in disciplinary contexts. In China, LIS doctoral education has expanded (19 granting institutions by Dec 2023; ~103 graduates/year), emphasizing new subfields (digital humanities, data science) and reflecting national priorities in information and knowledge management. Challenges include COVID-related hiring constraints, increased doctoral enrollments, and growth in temporary and library roles, raising concerns about employability. Gaps in the literature include limited holistic ecosystem analyses, sparse cross-institutional comparisons, and few empirical studies within specific disciplinary/geographical contexts—gaps this study addresses for LIS in China.

The study used quantitative text mining supplemented by manual coding on public LIS-related job advertisements aggregated by the authors’ "LIS Jobs" WeChat platform. Data collection: semantic web crawlers harvested postings from over 1750 websites (universities, research institutes, government, etc.). Inclusion focused on positions requiring a doctoral degree from 2016–2023, yielding 7832 valid postings across 334 employers after cleaning. Data analysis included: (1) manual coding of 334 employers by institutional type (universities, cultural institutions, military/police, government, state-owned enterprises, healthcare, etc.); (2) named entity recognition using a BERT–BiLSTM–CRF architecture to extract entities (departments, job titles, required disciplines/specializations, knowledge/skill requirements); the model achieved accuracy 86.0%, recall 90.8%, F1 88.33%; (3) multi-round iterative manual review and clustering by three LIS doctoral students to validate and consolidate entities (especially job titles and specializations). The resulting structured dataset fields included ID, Institution Type, Province, Institution, Department, Job Title, Job Description, Required Discipline, Education Requirement, and other entities. Topic modeling and high-frequency keyword analyses informed the functional typology of Alt-Ac roles.

Institutional distribution: Among 334 institutions, 63.2% were higher education institutions (notably university libraries with 171 positions; plus archives, museums, editorial offices, and administrative departments). Research institutions and think tanks comprised 11.7%; government and public sector 8.0% (public institutions, CPC party schools, civil service); cultural institutions 6.6% (public libraries, museums, archives, art galleries); state-owned enterprises 4.8% (industry intelligence analysis, publishing, libraries, archives); military and police institutions 4.2%; healthcare institutions 1.5%. Functional landscape and typology: Nine categories of Alt-Ac positions were identified with representative roles and proportions: (1) Collection Development and Digital Humanities (10.3%); (2) Research Data Management (8.3%); (3) Subject Services and Research Support (18.1%); (4) Archival Management and Compilation (9.1%); (5) Information Systems and Technical Services (6.6%); (6) Scholarly Communication and Publishing (6.2%); (7) Academic and Industry Research (15.0%); (8) Administrative Management (7.2%); (9) Intelligence and Patent Analysis (19.1%). A 3D functional framework was proposed spanning resource construction vs intelligence research (X), subject services vs social functions (Y), and traditional vs emerging orientations (Z), synthesizing four broader functional types noted in the abstract: resource construction, academic services, intelligence research, and social functions. Evolutionary trends (2016→2023): • Subject service roles declined from 35.3% to 16.7%. • Collection development and digital humanities increased from <1% to 10.1%. • Academic and industry research grew from 3.0% to 14.5%. • Newly prominent research-support roles in 2023: data literacy (2.8%), academic evaluation (3.3%), research management (3.8%), development planning (2.0%). • Think tank-oriented roles expanded: intellectual property from <0.5% to 4.9%, industrial technology intelligence to 3.5%, policy research to 2.2%. • Cross-boundary, tech-integrated roles (semantic technologies, science communication, archival big data, OA transformation agreements) rose from <1% cumulatively (2016) to 4.8% (2023). Sector-specific role emphases: universities prioritize academic service and research innovation; research institutes/think tanks focus on knowledge brokering and policy engagement; government/public sector on civic engagement and public service; cultural institutions on cultural heritage preservation and community engagement; state-owned enterprises on competitive intelligence and IP; military/police on information assurance and intelligence analysis; healthcare on medical knowledge organization and evidence-based support.

Findings address the research questions by mapping the breadth and institutional distribution of Alt-Ac roles, delineating nine functional categories within a unifying 3D framework, and documenting clear temporal shifts from traditional service-oriented roles to emerging, data-intensive, and impact-oriented positions. The results imply that Alt-Ac professionals are becoming integral to the research lifecycle—embedding in resource construction, research data management, evaluation, and scholarly communication—thus reshaping the LIS knowledge production paradigm toward openness, collaboration, and societal impact. The expansion of think tank and industry-facing roles underscores LIS’s growing influence beyond academia, bridging research and practice, and informing policy and innovation. For the academic labor market, Alt-Ac’s growth diversifies career pathways for LIS PhDs, challenges conventional academic vs non-academic binaries, and calls for competency-based training, stronger industry–academia partnerships, and recognition of Alt-Ac contributions within evaluation systems.

The study provides a comprehensive, data-driven portrait of Alt-Ac careers in China’s LIS field, analyzing 7832 doctoral-level job postings (2016–2023) to reveal institutional distributions, a nine-category functional typology, and a 3D framework integrating resource construction, academic services, intelligence research, and social functions. It documents a marked shift from traditional subject services toward emerging roles in digital humanities, data-intensive research support, competitive intelligence, and policy engagement. Contributions include methodological advances in large-scale recruitment text mining, an empirically grounded functional model of Alt-Ac roles, and actionable insights for aligning LIS doctoral education with evolving market demands. Future research should broaden sectoral coverage (especially private SMEs), incorporate qualitative studies of career trajectories and competencies in practice, and evaluate outcomes of curricular and partnership reforms designed to support Alt-Ac pathways.

The dataset primarily captures publicly advertised positions, potentially underrepresenting private-sector roles, especially in innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. The analysis is based on job advertisements rather than observed workplace practices, which may not fully reflect actual responsibilities or required competencies. Future work should expand data collection to more diverse organizational contexts and complement text mining with qualitative methods (e.g., interviews, case studies) to understand career trajectories and role enactment.