Authorship Patterns of Indigenous Knowledge in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Bibliometric Systematic Review of Tanzania’s Scholarly Journals Indexed by AJOL

Authorship Patterns of Indigenous Knowledge in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Bibliometric Systematic Review of Tanzania’s Scholarly Journals Indexed by AJOL

John J. Iwata¹ and Rhodes E. Mwageni²

1 Department of Knowledge Management, Moshi Co-operative University
2 Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College
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Abstract
This study focused on authorship patterns in Indigenous Knowledge Management (IKM) in Tanzania’s scholarly journals indexed by the African Journals Online (AJOL) database, spotlighting the significance of indigenous knowledge in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4th IR). Employing systematic literature review and rigorous bibliometric analysis, the study investigated the authorship patterns in this domain. It scrutinized authorship dynamics in 37 Tanzanian journals indexed by AJOL, the indexing platform of African-published journals, offering a nuanced portrayal of the scholarly landscape. The analysis focused on articles authored by Tanzanian authors between 2008 and 2013. Descriptive statistics show that the majority (65.6%) of authors opt for single-authored contributions, followed by two-author collaborations accounting for 27.9%, hence limited collaborative authorship and multidisciplinary collaboration among authors. These findings underscore the dominance of single authorship in scholarly publications, with limited collaborative authorship among authors from different geographic regions and interdisciplinaries, which may not fully leverage the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration essential for fostering innovation and inclusive development in the 4th IR. The findings in this study provide extra weight to the need for a paradigm shift towards collaborative authorship and interdisciplinary engagement. Such a shift is vital for effective indigenous knowledge transfer within academia, particularly amidst Tanzania's industrialization efforts in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Keywords: Authorship patterns, Indigenous Knowledge, bibliometric review, scholarly publishing, Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Proceedings of the 6th COTUL Scientific Conference, 11–12 November 2024 at TMDA, Mwanza, Tanzania