Building the youth mentoring knowledge base: Publishing trends and coauthorship networks

摘要

Despite the long history and widespread popularity of youth mentoring, only in the past two decades has an academic literature emerged to support the development of program policies and practices. This study examines knowledge development in the field of youth mentoring, with special attention to trends in the number and nature of articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals between 1990 and 2010. The analysis also represents this base of knowledge as a network of articles interconnected by patterns of co-authorship. The co-authorship network reveals a notable subset of scholars from several disciplines who are publishing frequently and collaboratively on the topic of youth mentoring. The existence of a core network of youth mentoring researchers bodes well for continued growth of the literature providing theoretical insight and empirical evidence on effective mentoring for youth.