Education in Africa 
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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | The Information Drain |
| Author: | Ibrahim, Mamman Aminu |
| Year: | 1991 |
| Periodical: | Development Policy Review |
| Volume: | 9 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Period: | March |
| Pages: | 99-106 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Nigeria Africa |
| Subjects: | information management Education and Oral Traditions Miscellaneous (i.e. Demography, Refugees, Sports) |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7679.1991.tb00177.x |
| Abstract: | Access to locally generated information appears to be a problem in Nigeria, judging from accusations and counteraccusations in the nation's print media. This study examines what, if anything, happens to the information being generated by scientists in Nigeria, using requests for offprints of their articles received by staff of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, as sources of data. In all, 865 requests for a total of 61 articles published between 1974 and 1987 were recovered from 13 authors. On a geopolitical basis, North American and European countries asked for the most information, and African subregions the least. Requests for offprints should be of vast importance to scientists in Third World nations. Yet the data show that this method is not sufficiently exploited by scientists in Africa. Indeed, their greater time lag suggests that even the smaller number of requests from developing countries are less likely to be honoured by authors compared with those from advanced countries, because authors' offprints are a limited resource and are sent out on 'first-requested-first-served' basis. The greater overall time lag of requests for articles published in local journals is probably due to the irregular nature of the local journals. Bibliogr. |
