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Predatory journals take a bite out of Nigerian education research

Image: Wildlife for life [CC BY-ND 2.0], via Flickr

More than a third of papers published in eight years appeared in unscrupulous publications

A journal paper has found that more than a third of Nigeria’s education research output published between 2010 and 2018 appeared in predatory journals, which charge authors to publish and provide little quality control such as peer review.

The paper was written by three researchers based in the United Kingdom and appeared in the August issue of Comparative Education Review. The research included a bibliometric analysis of papers and interviews with African researchers. 

A third of the more than 700 education research papers by Nigerian authors in the years analysed appeared in journals that “lack conventional standards of peer review, some containing spelling and grammatical errors,” the paper notes. The ratio was significantly higher than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa that the paper examined. Most surveyed countries published at least 90 per cent of their papers in reputable journals.

Researchers interviewed for the paper bemoaned the state of education research in the country. One alleged that “every university [in Nigeria] has a journal”. A Nigerian respondent said that lecturers do not have “a practical understanding” of how to draw up research studies.

The authors argue that setting up screening mechanisms at African institutions could “incentivise concern for the quality over quantity of publications”.

The authors said that South Africa was excluded from the research as its academic sector is far more developed, and so does not share in the issues faced by the rest of the continent.