VISIBILITY OF AFRICAN SCHOLARS IN THE LITERATURE OF BIBLIOMETRICS

This paper discusses the visibility of African scholars in the literature of Bibliometrics, as it appears in the Library and Information Science Abstract (LISA) from 1982-2010. Analysis was conducted on a list of 75 papers generated from the Abstract. The yearwise growth of the literature shows that single authorship dominates the literature, scoring 52% and the average number of publication per year was found to be 2.7. On the productivity of authors, Lotka’s formulation of inverse square law of scientific productivity was applied and found to be in harmony with the literature. Bradford-zipf Law for distribution of papers was also applied and found to be in conformity with the literature of Bibliometrics. Prolific authors were found to be 6 in number and their contributions falls between 3-16 papers within the 28 years period of the study. English language was found to be the dominant language with 91.3% score, and then followed by French with 8.7% score.