Gender and authorship patterns in an African librarianship journal, 1991‐1997

The authorship of AJLAIS over seven years was subjected to analysis by gender, collaboration and institutional affiliation. A total of 95 research articles contributed by 118 authors were analysed. Results indicated male dominance of single‐authored articles, 83.2 per cent to 16.8 per cent. Of the 16 co‐authored articles nine (56.25 per cent) were co‐authored by men only, one article (6.25 per cent) was co‐authored by women only, and gender mixture was found in six (37.5 per cent) of the articles. A cross‐tabulation of institutional affiliation with gender revealed that no woman contributed any article from special and public libraries while there was a relative gender mixture in academic libraries and library schools. There is a need to encourage female publication output in all sectors of librarianship and information science in Africa.