Black articles matter: exploring relative deprivation and implicit bias in library and information science research publications of Africa and other continents

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore relative deprivation and implicit bias in library and information science research publications of Africa and other continents. Research design used for this study is descriptive survey research. Specifically, the study will adopt both web content analysis and survey to collect data. The content analysis covers the whole continents of the world: Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Northern America, Pacific Region and Western Europe; using the Webometrics World Ranking of Universities and the SCImago/Scopus Journal Ranking. Library and information science was used as the search and control parameter. The scopes covered by the research are: 1. Ascertaining the visible publishing and assessment standards of top library and information science (LIS) journals, which was evaluated using Kleinert and Wager (2010)'s study. It was found out among others that editors making fair and unbiased decisions as policy is seen in 33% of the journals, which is very poor. All the structural disparities, such as presence ranking, impact ranking, excellence ranking, etc. were favouring Europe and the Americas mainly. As much as rejection is getting to these respondents, research generally is also suffering by missing out on some untapped knowledge and ideas from these deprived populations. Many authors are losing faith in their capabilities and are now afraid of venturing into tedious research exercises because it will most likely be rejected either ways. It is an established fact that social media gains research impact and attracts international collaborations. In support, studies such as Hassan et al. (2019) reported the fact that tweet mentions of articles with positive sentiment to more visibility and citations. They claim that cited articles in either positive or neutral tweets have a more significant impact than those not cited at all or cited in negative tweets. In addition, Hassan et al. (2020) equally highlighted tweet coupling as a social media methodology useful for clustering scientific publications. Despite the fact that social media have these influences on research and publications visibility and presence, the context of the present research did cover this scope of study. The study focused mainly on sources from Scopus as well as results from responses. Further studies can be carried out on this area. Research studies linking “Black Articles Matter” to relative deprivation and implicit bias in research publications, especially in library and information discipline, are very rare. Also, the scope of approach of the study is quite different and interesting.