An Investigation of the International Visibility, Quality, and Impact of Journals Published in Tanzania

Abstract

This study investigated the international visibility, quality, and impact of journals published in Tanzania. The objective of the study was to determine the extent to which the journals are internationally visible, their compliance with publishing standards, and the impact they have made to the academic community. A total of 31 journals from 12 institutions were involved in the study. The questionnaire, interview, observation and database searches were used in data collection. The study found that most of the journals are not internationally visible. Most of them are not included in tools that facilitate visibility of journals. The journals however, meet the standards required in journal publishing. Lack of financial resources, reviewers' delay in returning the manuscripts, shortage of articles for publishing, lack of motivation and skills were identified as the constraints. A number of recommendations are made to alleviate the constraints and improve their visibility.

A Scientometric Analysis of Africa’s Health Science Journals Indexed in International and Regional Databases: A Comparative Analysis

“…In terms of countries, Egypt (15) and South Africa (15) had same number of journals, followed by Nigeria (8), on the top 20 list of journals with highest Google scholar H5-Index Table 3. Only 19 health sciences journals from Africa have their JIF calculated for 2022.…”

“…This is mostly because there are few African journals included in the international citation databases [ 1 , 3 , 4 ], which reduces the visibility of the continent’s health science research. Several studies have reported an increase in scientific impact following indexing of journals in international and regional citation databases as it increases visibility [ 5 – 8 ]. Likewise, indexing status of a journal is one of the factors that influences author’s selection of journal to publish with.…”

Publication productivity and scholarly impact of academic librarians in Tanzania

“…Despite the fact that research and publishing is an important role of academic librarians, these findings reveal that they do not conduct enough research and, thus, published less. Previously, Msuya and Muneja (2011) and Sendikakawa (2005) reported that the state of LIS research and publishing in East African is very low with only a few renowned professionals publishing a lot, whereas many others publish very little. This is contrary to what has been reported from other African countries such as Nigeria.…”