How African is the African Journal of Hospitality Tourism and Leisure? An analysis of publishing trends for the period 2011-2018

Abstract

There is a subset of scholarship that relates to analysis of a particular discipline’s leading scholarly journals and their published articles. In the fields of tourism, hospitality and leisure is the appearance and rise of a body of international literature which examines variously the thematic contents, leading individual authors, institutions and citations of journals. In Africa only a limited literature exists about publishing in the field of tourism, hospitality and leisure. This paper offers an exploratory analysis of publishing and in particular of patterns of production and consumption of research articles in the African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure. Major attention is given to the African contribution to and of the journal. It is disclosed that the journal has expanded greatly in terms of its published output since 2014. Further, it has established a critical research focus on the tourism, hospitality and leisure sectors in Africa. Although the largest share of contributions are generated from and about South Africa the journal has a reach and impact beyond that country as indexed by the range of other African countries represented in the journal. Arguably, in terms of the consumption of published articles and research in the journal it is disconcerting to reveal the relatively high proportion of articles published in the journal which seemingly fail to attract any citations in other scholarship in the field of tourism, hospitality and leisure.

Keywords

• tourism
• hospitality and leisure journals
• publishing patterns
• research focus
• Africa