The implications of COVID 19 on the publication of library and information science literature in Africa: A bibliometric study

Abstract

In almost a blink of an eye COVID 19 pandemic has surprised the world with devastating effects witnessed across the globe. There was urgent need to establish whether COVID 19 has taken hold of the publishing industry based on the unprecedented pandemic situation in the modern world. The study employed desk review alongside citation and bibliographic analysis to carry out inquiry into the publications in Library and Information Science as a case covering the period 2017 to 2020 and looking at the top 10 publishing countries in Africa. There was need to ascertain the hypothesis that COVID 19 pandemic could have affected the publication trends of literature with consideration of the trajectories before and at present. Findings suggest that research output increased during COVID 19 period with Nigeria and South Africa taking the lead in publications respectively while South Africa had the highest impact factor. Uganda, and Algeria remained extremely low with disparity between countries in terms of the number of publications wider as evidenced by the higher standard deviation of 100.9.