The current status of science journals published in Bangladesh

• Published in: Journal of scholarly publishing Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 38 - 46
• Main Author: Ahmed, Hasan S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: North York, ON University of Toronto Press 01.10.1998
• Subjects: Bangladesh; Disorders; Editing; Exact sciences and technology; Information and communication sciences; Information publishing, dissemination and reproduction; Information science. Documentation; Libraries; Medicine; Periodicals; Politics; Publishing; Publishing. Electronic publishing. Bibliological aspects; Questionnaires; Readability; Scholarly publishing; Science; Sciences and techniques of general use; Scientific literature; Asia; Bangladesh; Scientific literature; Evaluation; State of the art; Publishing; Periodical; Information quality
• ISSN: 1198-9742

There is no dearth of science journals in Bangladesh, but most of these are published irregularly, without proper editing and peer review. This is true not only in Bangladesh, but in many other developing countries. Thus, these poor countries spend huge amounts of resources to produce publications that are not indexed and abstracted by major indexing and abstracting journals and authorities. Because of the lack of proper editing and review, the quality of publication is poor in most cases, particularly in content, organization, and readability. Most of these journals also have a limited circulation because of a lack of subscriptions and irregular publication. As a result, these journals remain grey literature: the world community does not have access to the many important scientific achievements of the developing countries. The data were collected through 1) physical verification of currently published science journals available in major libraries and 2) questionnaire survey (face-to-face interviews) of authors to gather their views on the local journals and the peer review system used by these journals. Eight major libraries in Dhaka were visited to physically examine the available current science journals published in Bangladesh. The libraries visited were the National Medical Library and Documentation Centre, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B) Library, Bangladesh Institute for Research on Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Disorders (BIRDEM) Library, Institute for Post-Graduate Medicine and Research (IPGMR) Library, Dhaka Medical College Library, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) Library, Dhaka University Library, and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) Library. Only the English language journals were considered, since almost all Bangladeshi journals are published in English. The subjects covered included biomedicine, agriculture, pure and applied science, economics, social development, political science, public administration, communication, engineering, statistics, and training. Only those journals dated between January 1995 and September 1997 were considered. Irregular publication of science journals is a major problem in Bangladesh. Poor editing and review, inconsistencies, and limited circulation are also important deterrents to promoting journals in Bangladesh. The findings show that only about 16 per cent of the biomedical journals published in Bangladesh are indexed, compared with about 29 per cent of India's medical journals.(f.1) The situation is worse for social science and agricultural journals. Internationally, indexing is one of the important indicators for evaluating a journal, as well as scheduled publication and peer review. These aspects were found to be lacking in most Bangladeshi journals studied. Many authors also agreed with this finding.