Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate through citation analysis, the types of information resources Nigerian agricultural science researchers (with particular reference to animal health and production) use in their scholarly communication process. The design of the study is a citation analysis approach. Two main line journals in animal health and production namely; Nigerian Journal of Animal Production and Nigerian Veterinary Journal were used for this study. All the volumes of these journals for a period of seven years were used for the study. References in these journals were harvested and used for the analysis. There were a total of 8328 citations harvested from the journals out of which 58% of them are journal citations and books and monographs accounted for 24%. The findings also reveal that more than 31% of the cited sources were published between 1991 and 2000 while 25.9% were published from 1981 to 1990. Materials of 2001 to date constituted 20.2%. There is also a very low citation to electronic sources which would have provided citations to more current materials. Similarly, authorship pattern reveals that multiple authors dominate the cited sources. About 21 journals were identified as the most frequently cited journals while most frequently researched animal is poultry. The age of the cited sources suggests that the researchers lack access to current research and therefore has a lot of policy implications to Nigerian university libraries in terms of subscribing to current journals in the libraries with emphasis on the identified frequently cited journals. This is a fundamental study with interest in identifying the sources of information for Nigerian researchers interested in animal health and production, the volume of research in the area, authorship pattern and the most consulted journals in the area.

Key words: Citation analysis, bibliometrics, journals, scholarly communication, agricultural information, animal health, animal production.