Maghreb Journal of Documentation and Information from 1983 to 2020: a bibliometric study

Abstract

Throughout this work, the general characteristics of the Maghreb Journal of Documentation and Information have been introduced since its’ establishment in 1983 to 2020. The Maghreb Journal of Documentation and Information is published annually by the Higher Institute of Documentation. The researchers have used the bibliometric approach in order to quantify the frequency of publications and to review the percentage of articles’ productivity and their distribution during the years of publications. The study found that there is an average of 447 articles published by 572 authors in 29 issues over a period of 24 years from the actual publications, without considering the years of interruption. It is worth to mention that the journal was resuming its activities and functions after each interruption, especially after the scientific events to publish their activities or after changing its directing members. Moreover, in order to clarify the direction of the journal and its editorial board, the bibliometric approach has also helped to extract the sub-topics presented by the publications, as it is the only journal specialised in the information science in Tunisia. In addition, besides studying of the linguistic writing choices of the authors; the study focused on the Influence of the French language in writings to understand the general cultural and social framework that made the Arabic language ranked as a second language in number of publications.