A Comparative Study of the Productivity of HIV/AIDS Literature on Nigeria and South Africa in Medline and Science Citation Index

Abstract

Bibliographic data on HIV/AIDS literature on Nigeria and South Africa were drawn from Medline and Science Citation Index (SCI) respectively, covering the period 2000-2004, to study the productivity of literature produced by ‘all authors', ‘first authors', ‘non-collaborative authors' and ‘co-authors' using Lotka's Law. The first authors in Medline did not yield usable result for Nigeria, but the characteristic exponents for the other categories of authors are higher for Nigeria (α ranging between 2 and 4) than South Africa (α ranging between 2 and 3). Based on SCI, the model yielded only useful result for the Nigerian co-authors, whereas all other categories of authors yielded exponents that ranged between 1 and 3 for South Africa. We deduce that Medline appears to accommodate HIV/AIDS literature emanating from Nigeria more than it does those coming from South Africa while the opposite is the case with SCI. Finally, scientific productivity in Nigeria is more significant when assessed based on Medline than SCI. The reverse is the case for South Africa.

African Journal of Library Archives and Information Science Vol. 17 (1) 2007: pp. 1-13