A content analysis of Ife psychologia, 1993–2002

Abstract

Bibliometric attributes, including formats and recency of citation, have been used to obtain a content analysis of Ife Psychologia from its inception in 1993 to 2002. The data on geographical spread of authorship and subject matter coverage from the 20 issues published were subjected to the Bradford Statistical Model. The results indicate that Ife Psychologia is a multi-disciplinary international journal that has been able to continue publishing in spite of the problems afflicting journal publishing in Africa. A total of 382 authors from 26 countries contributed to the journal, with foreign authorship rising from an initial average of 21.7% in the first 6 years to around 52% in the last 4 years. Subject matter coverage spanned over 14 fields, including psychology, education, sociology and mental health. Journals (47.7%) and books (45.2%) constituted the most cited works by authors. Though cited works were not all that current (only 20% under 5 years of publication), the incidence of authors’ self-citation was minimal, being 5.3% overall and just 1.2% for the journal's self-citation. The study provides a good testimonial for the inclusion of the journal in the suite of African Journals On-Line and should assist in strengthening its editorial management.