Failing the academy: low written output in an African University

Abstract

The study investigated the publishing trends of academic staff at University of Zambia and doctors at University Teaching Hospital in order to highlight the trends and possible barriers to publishing by academic staff and doctors. The studied reviewed publication histories of academic staff at the university for the period 2000 to 2005 by examining university documents in three schools (engineering, medicine, and mines), by author searches on PubMed search engine, surveys by questionnaire, and focus group discussions with workshop participants. Twenty nine questionnaires, 58% response rate, were returned and 35 academic staff (70%) of the workshop attendants participated in the focus group discussions. The questionnaire respondents' profile was 1 full professor, 5 senior lecturers, 19 lecturers, 4 honorary lecturers. All participants had a minimum of a Masters degree. The publication trends were low at all academic ranks ranging from professors, associate professors, senior lecturers, and lecturers. Over 75% of respondents had between 0-3 publications, 10% had between 4-8 publications and another 10% had between 9-15 publications, while less than 3% reported having more than 15 publications.