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As LIS researches abound, it is, therefore, necessary to measure the publication pattern of such studies to identify the trends as well as developing the field of study. Likewise, due to the incursion of ICT into various activities, it has been observed by previous studies (Edewor, 2013; Anyaoku & Okonkwo, 2018; Udo-Anyanwu, 2018; Usman & Ewulum, 2019) that many LIS researchers focus more on the use of ICT, thereby leaving out other subject areas. This usually creates literature and research gaps, which is damaging to the future of the profession. Similarly, observations have shown that many of the available informetrics often times analyze articles domiciled in electronic databases (Wen & Hsieh, 2014; Eniayejuni, 2020; Sweileh, 2020). This may be as a result of readily available (secondary) data needed to complete such studies. However, the problem associated with this is that leaving out print journals or publications is not good for the development of the profession, as a major part of collections in many libraries across Africa are still paper-based (Ogunmodede & Ebijuwa, 2013; Dare & Ikegune, 2018). Therefore, there is the need to conduct an informetrics study using paper-based publications as primary data will be collected directly by the researcher from the journal. Researchers and publishers of academic journals need to be informed and guided on what to write and publish respectively. It was on this basis that this study set out to carry out a 10-year informetrics analysis of research articles published in the African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Studies (AJLAIS) from 2009 to 2018.

This study provided answers to the following research questions:

• ㆍ What is the distribution of articles and authors in AJLAIS by year and issue from 2009-2018?
• ㆍ What is the year-wise growth of research articles published in AJLAIS from 2009-2018?
• ㆍ What is the overall/year-wise authorship pattern of AJLAIS from 2009-2018?
• ㆍ What is the subject distribution of published articles in AJLAIS from 2009-2018?
• ㆍ What is the degree of collaboration among authors of articles in AJLAIS from 2009-2018?
• ㆍ What are the geographic distributions of the authors in AJLAIS from 2009-2018?
• ㆍ What are the types of research articles published in AJLAIS from 2009-2018?
• ㆍ Who are the most published authors in AJLAIS from 2009-2018?

The articles were distributed based on the number of articles published and the numbers of authors recorded for such articles. The results are presented in Table 1 showing evidence of a total of 141 articles published from 2009 to 2018. The highest number of articles published in AJLAIS was recorded in year 2016 as 17 (12.06%), while the least was recorded in 2011 and 2012 (12; 8.51%) in each year. Similarly, the highest number of contributing authors for AJLAIS was recorded in 2016 (35; 13.16%) while the least, 18 (6.77%) was recorded in 2012.

Table 2 and Fig. 1 show that there was an annual decline in the number of publications in AJLAIS from 2009 to 2012, with an annual average decline rate of -14.29% recorded in 2011. There was positive growth from 8.33% in 2013 to 23.08% recorded in the year 2014. However, the growth reverted to negative (-18.75%) in 2015 which was the overall highest decline rate within the 10- year period, closely followed by that of 2017 which is -17.65%. In 2016 and 2018, a positive growth of 30.77% and 7.14% respectively were recorded. This zig-zag growth pattern is similar to the publication growth pattern discovered by Gaud, Verma, and Shukla (2018) in a similar study of publication outputs of Faculty members in BBA Univesity, Luknow, India, from 1991-2017 and also Ramiah-Santha (2016) on study of publications trends in Nuclear Physics from 2004 – 2013. This points out that this pattern is not only experienced in the field of LIS only but other fields of study as well. From the total 141 articles that were published during the 10-year period, there is the annual average growth rate of just 1.20% which is relatively small.

Fig. 1. 
Year- wise growth of research articles published in AJLAIS

Table 3 reveals that from the 141 articles published in AJLAIS from 2009 to 2018, the highest number of single authored article was 7 in 2009 and 2012. Also, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 recorded highest 7 articles contributed by two authors. Similarly, in year 2016 and 2017, highest 4 articles were published by three authors. The authorship patterns recorded in AJLAIS were in line with Gaud (2019) and Shukla, Yadav, and Verma (2018) findings. However, these findings contradict Siwach (2013) who discovered that majority of articles published in IFLA Journal from 2008-2012 were single authorship. This shows that many authors still prefer sole researching and or collaborating with just one more; an indication that there is the need for LIS researchers across the African continent to collaborate more.

Table 4 shows the degree of collaborations among the authors that published in AJLAIS from 2009 to 2018. The Table shows that from the 141 articles published during the period under review, 53 articles were single authored while the remaining 88 were multiple authored with an overall degree of collaboration of 0.62. This implies that the authors published more collaborative works than single authored publications. Also, the highest collaborative index was recorded in the year 2017 (0.79), whereas the least was recorded in 2012 which was 0.42. The overall collaborative index of 0.62 from AJLAIS contradicts a higher collaborative index discovered by Verma and Shukla (2018) and Mondal, Kanamadi, and Das (2017) in similar studies. This shows that authors that published in AJLAIS still need to do more collaborative research.

Table 5 shows the distribution of subjects published articles in AJLAIS from 2009-2018. The seemingly related subjects were grouped and tagged together. There were a total of 21 subjects through which the articles were grouped. It was evident from the Table that the subject with highest number of articles, 20 (28.2%), was on informetrics/research productivity, followed by articles on ICT/cloud computing/social media, 17 (12.10%), and library/Information management, 15 (10.64%). However, there was just 1 (0.71%) article each on subject areas such as gender issues in LIS and legal deposit, with no article on such areas as indexing, bibliography and serial collection management.

This is related to Anyaoku and Okonkwo (2018) discovery that articles on ICT dominated the Library and Information Science Digest Journal from 2007-2016, and Udo-Anyanwu (2018) who also discovered that ICT is the most researched subject (23%) from among the 1,022 articles studied from 2004-2013. Similarly, Usman and Ewulum (2019) identified that many of the articles (13.2%) published in the Journal of Applied Information Science and Technology (JAIST) from 2007-2017 focused on ICT while articles on library management constituted just 8.80%.

The dominance of articles on ICT may not be unconnected with the keen interest the LIS practitioners have in such areas, as observed by Tsafe, Chiya, and Aminu (2016) that 25% of sampled librarians across 16 Universities in Nigeria claimed ICT as their research area of interests, distantly followed by 8% that claimed library automation (which is also a subset of ICT applications in Library).

Also, this subject distribution has shown areas of research gaps in LIS in Africa. While it should be noted that AJLAIS is a general LIS journal that receives articles on different areas of librarianship, however, one would expect the subject areas to be evenly distributed. The implication of this finding was that many research gaps in LIS have been identified, which there was little or no research article published on them over the ten-year period under review. Such research gaps include: Data Management/Science and Mining; institutional repository; reading culture; legal depository; academic library development; Audio Visual management; serial publication management; cataloging and classification; indexing; abstracting; collection development; public/school library development; library finance and gender issues in LIS. This corroborated de Oliveira et al. (2020) assertion that subject distribution is needed in order to identify various research gaps and follow publication trends in a particular field. Therefore, if nothing is done to fill these research gaps, it will lead to a dearth of literature and stagnate developments in such areas in the future which is not good for the LIS profession.

From Table 6, it was evident that the highest numbers of contributions, 108 (40.60%), were from South Africa, followed by Nigeria, 95 (35.71%), Botswana, 14 (5.26%) and Ghana, 9 (3.38%). The three least contributions were from Uganda, 3 (1.13%), Malaysia, 2 (0.75%) and Senegal, 1 (0.38%) respectively. It was significant to note that South Africa and Nigeria have jointly contributed over three-quarters, 203 (76.31%), of all the 266 articles published in AJLAIS over the 10 years under review. Also, it was noted that there were some international collaborations among the authors. This is presented in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. 
Map showing the international collaborative pattern among the authors in AJLAIS from 2009-2018

This top position claimed by South Africa and Nigeria was in line with Singh and Chander (2014) and also Siwach (2013) findings. According to Siwach (2013), South Africa and Nigeria claimed 4th and 5th position respectively among the top 22 countries in the world that published articles in the International Federation of Library Association (IFLA) Journal from 2008-2012. While South Africa contributed 5.98% of the published articles during that period, Nigeria contributed 5.13%. The percentages recorded for South Africa and Nigeria were ahead of other developed nations of the world like Germany (7th position) and France (14th position). This was also similar to Verma et al. (2018) findings which recorded Nigeria (1st position), Ghana (5th position), Tanzania (9th position), Uganda (10th position) and South Africa (11th position) among the top 35 countries across the globe that contributed articles to LPP (e-journal) from 2008 to 2017. This implied that LIS researchers from Africa, especially Nigeria and South Africa were thriving and making their presence felt in the global map of LIS research by contributing immensely to the development of the profession.

Similarly, the finding revealed that South Africa was the most collaborative country among the 13 countries that contributed research articles to the AJLAIS from 2009-2018. From the 14 international collaborations recorded, 10 were linked to South Africa. However, examining this further, it was revealed that there was no collaborative article between Nigeria and South Africa during the period, more so that the countries were the most prolific contributors to the articles.

Fig. 2 shows the international collaborations observed from AJLAIS from 2009–2018. From the 14 international collaborations observed, 10 (71.43%) are linked to South Africa, making it the most collaborated country on the continent, while the remaining 4 (28.57%) were from other countries, excluding South Africa. However, it is significant to note that the two most contributing countries to AJLAIS (South Africa and Nigeria) have no collaborative work within the 10 years under review. What the likely cause of this could be is unknown. However, collaborative research is a global trend and it is worthy of note that LIS researchers from Africa are also abreast of such global devolvement.

International collaboration among LIS researchers in Africa is still developing. As observed by Maluleka and Onyancha (2016), collaborative research is often between colleagues from the same department or institution, more than those outside their institutions or country. Similarly, Ocholla (2008) and Ameen, Malik, and Khan (2018) observed that international collaboration among LIS researchers in developing nations like Africa is still largely weak and informal due to a lack of commitment and leadership among the concerned stakeholders. This finding implies that LIS researchers in the two most contributed countries (Nigeria and South Africa) failed to collaborate, despite their track records (Siwach, 2013; Singh & Chander, 2014; Verma et al., 2018) in contributing meaningfully to global LIS publications. This is not good enough for the development of the LIS profession in Africa, as synergy between the two prolific countries can positively change the development of the profession.

The types of research articles commonly published in AJLAIS are presented in Fig. 3. It shows that the highest type of publication common to the journal was a survey, 92 (65.25%). This was distantly followed by opinion papers, 19 (13.47%), informetrics, 17 (12.06%) and case study, 9 (6.38%). This finding is in line with Hider and Pymm (2008) discovery that 68% of articles published in six high-profile LIS Journals in 2005 were of survey/empirical type, while the remaining 32% were non-empirical (opinion) in nature. This implies that empirical papers that were published in the Journal during the period were more than non-empirical, which is an indication that many LIS researchers engage in types of research that is apt for the development of the profession. Also, Togia and Malliari (2017) discovered that majority (78%) of 440 articles published in five prominent LIS journals from 2011 to 2016 were of the empirical type, which is in line with the present study. This further implies that the majority of the articles published in the journal were evidence-based, empirical and factual, which can aid generalization and further develop the profession as decisions can be made on genuine information.

Fig. 3. 
Types of research articles published in AJLAIS from 2009-2018

The 9 most productive authors in AJLAIS from 2009-2018 were studied and the results are presented in Table 7. It is evident from the Table that the 9 most productive authors featured from 3 to 9 articles each, while others were features once or twice. The contributions of the 9 most productive authors in AJLAIS during the period under review were very significant. From Table 7, the most productive authors were identified by their names. This reveals that Ngulube, P. was the most productive author whereby he was featured in 9 articles (representing 6.38% of the total 141 articles contributed), followed by Ocholla, D. N. which was featured 7 times (4.96%) and Onyancha, O. B., 6 times (4.26%).

From the Table, it is also evident that of all the most prolific authors listed, only one (Nwagwu W. E) was from Nigeria. According to a related study by Okeji, Bosah, and Eze (2018) on citation analysis of most prolific LIS researchers in Nigeria from 2000–May 2018, Nwagwu was ranked 3rd most prolific and cited author from Nigeria (in LIS) with 70 articles and 684 citations from data obtained through Google Scholar. Having just one Nigerian from a list of 9 most prolific authors in AJLAIS is not enough from a country that contributed 35.71% articles to the journal during the 10-year period which earned her the 2nd position behind South Africa with a maximum of 40.60% for the same period of time. The implication of this finding is that there is more to be done by LIS researchers in Nigerians to contribute more to the number of articles published in the journal so as to maximize their chances.