A quarterly specialized journal
The Message Of Folklore from Bahrain To The World

Trends in Arab Folk Culture Publishing: The example of the Journal of Folk Culture

Issue 52
Trends in Arab Folk Culture Publishing: The example of the Journal of Folk Culture

By Dr Ahmad Faruk Al Sayid Othman

This study presents the following findings:

  1. The folk literature, customs, traditions, performing arts, and material culture sections include 71% of the articles published in the Journal of Folk Culture.
  2. The folk literature section has the largest percentage of articles published in a single issue. The number of published articles ranged between 2 and 7, with the exception of the fourth issue in which one article was only published. The sections on customs, traditions, and material culture each have 1-4 articles in one issue.
  3. Three authors contributed 60 articles, which represent 13% of the total number of articles published in the journal. These authors are Ali Abdullah Khalifa (31), the editorial board (20), and Muhammad Najib Al-Nuwayri (9). They are followed by 21 authors, each of whom provided 4-8 articles; these  121 articles represent 19.4% of the total number of articles. This means that 24 authors who represent 7.3% of the total number of authors contributed 173 articles/translations/co-authored articles, which amounts to 32.5% of the total number of articles published in issues 1-40 of the Journal of Folk Culture.
  4. The number of authors in the folk literature section was 119, which represents 28% of the total number of authors. This is followed by authors in the customs and traditions section (21%), and those in the material culture section (14.5%).
  5. Individual authorship is the dominant feature of the trends in scientific publishing in the Journal of Folk Culture. There are 7 co-authored articles, which represents 1.12% of the total number of articles. This means that individual authorship accounts for 98% of the intellectual production published in the journal.
  6. The geographic distribution of the authors indicates that Bahraini authors provided 128 articles (23% of the total number of articles published in the journal), followed by authors from Egypt with 87 articles (15.4%), authors from Tunisia with 84 articles (15%), then authors from Morocco with 76 articles (13.5%).
  7. The geographic distribution of the topics covered in the articles indicates that the foremost topic is folk culture in the Arab world, followed by topics related to folk culture in Bahrain, Morocco, Tunisia, and then Egypt.
  8. At the forefront of the thematic trends of the articles published in the journal are topics dealing with folk culture in general, followed by topics related to folk literature, folk arts, performing arts, customs and traditions, and folk beliefs.

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