Publish or perish: African scholarship in the field of tourism and hospitality studies

Abstract

This paper critically analyses state-of-the-art practices in African scholarship on tourism and hospitality. This broad aim translates into two objectives. The first was a bibliometric analysis of the publication patterns of Africa-based scholars in four leading tourism and hospitality management journals between 1990 and 2010. The second objective identified the challenges to getting research articles published in high-impact journals. The results suggest that within the 20-year period, very few research articles were published albeit by single authors. The subject content of the journal articles focused on tourist perceptions and behaviour mostly produced by universities and institutions in South Africa, Kenya and Botswana. The research field was also generally under studied with its attendant axiomatic reliance upon Western/Eurocentric canon. Furthermore, the major identified bottlenecks to research productivity were mostly human-induced. Against this backdrop, the study argues that considerable efforts are needed to develop a culture that encourages research publications in high impact journals from an African worldview.