Islamic scholarly publishing and a comparative analysis of religious publications in the National Bibliography of Nigeria

Abstract

Religious publishing is not strange to the knowledge production community of the human race. However, Islamic publishing has been problematic either in Nigeria or elsewhere in the globe. Literature has shown a slow response to scholarly publishing from the Muslim world generally. This study seeks to evaluate the performance of religious publishing between 2011 and 2018 in Nigeria and the quantum of contributions of Islam to this productivity. The data for the study was obtained from the National Bibliography of Nigeria which aggregates the bibliographic records of publications produced in the country annually. A total of 1,992 entries within the period of 2011-2018 was extracted from the NBN representing the entire publications recorded for religious publications for the period under review. The 1,992 entries were later collated for subsequent interpretation and further analysis using descriptive statistics. The findings show a decrease in the publishing activities of religious organizations and authors of religious books in Nigeria within the period, the extremely low performance of Islamic (Other) Religious Publications, and domination of the scene by CRP. Therefore there is an urgent need for sensitization of potential authors of Islamic books, training for Muslim publishing houses on the technicality of book production.