Publication productivity and scholarly impact of academic librarians in Tanzania

Abstract

Purpose– The purpose of this scientometric study was to conduct an analysis of the research productivity andscholarly impactofacademiclibrariansinTanzaniaforaperiodof30yearsfrom1984 to 2013. Design/methodology/approach– Data were obtained using the Publish or Perish software which uses Google Scholar to retrieve scholars’ publications, citations and related metrics. For each librarian, the retrieved metrics were the number of papers, papers per author, citation counts, average citations per paper, average papers per author, average citations per year, average citations per author and four indices, namely, the h-index, g-index, Hc-index and the HI-norm. Findings– The study findings indicate that 434 publications were recorded for all librarians, giving anaverageof14.5publicationsperyear.Theyear2008hadthemost(9.9percent)publicationsfollowed by2010(7.8percent),whiletheyears1985and1987hadthelowest(0.2percent)numberofpublications. About43percentofthepublicationsweresingle-authoredandthedegreeofcollaborationwas0.57.The top-ten ranked librarians contributed more than half (53.2 per cent) of all publications, although they showed considerable variation among different metrics. Only three journal articles had 25 or more citations. Originality/value– Previousstudiesonthetopicarescarce,and,therefore,thispaperprovidesuseful recommendationstolibraryandinformationscience(LIS)schools, libraries and universities to improve research productivity of their academic librarians in Tanzania and other countries with a similar setting.