An informetric analysis of the corruption literature based on Africa between 1990 and 2001

Abstract

This paper explores corruption literature as reflected in four online databases in the 12-year period from 1990 to 2001. Descriptive informetrics has been used for the ar^aiysis of the publications. The results of the study indicate that there was a remarkable increase in the number of articles from just nine in 1990 to 78 in 1999. followed by a decline in both 2000 and 2001. Although there seems to be a relationship between the number of articles and the level of corruption, the 0.370 correlation value is not significant to warrant a definite conclusion. EBSCO and its databases produced 90.3% while ISI yielded only 9.7%. Magazines yielded 74.1% of the records, and journals 25.9%. The researchers concentrated more on political corruption as opposed to administrative corruption. It was also observed that single authorship of publications on corruption stood at 76.4% for journals and 56.7% for magazines, while co-authored articles constituted 15.5% of journal articles and 8.5% of the magazine articles. Whereas Lotkas Law of Author Productivity applied as far as its theoretical observation is concerned, it does not apply statistically. The applicability of Bradford's Law of Scattering was confirmed.