Towards a Uniform Terminology for Indigenous Knowledge Concepts: Informetrics Perspectives

Abstract

The knowledge of the traditional and indigenous communities (herein referred to as indigenous knowledge) lacks a uniform label or definition as there are several labels that have been used to describe the knowledge. The purpose of this study is to explore and identify the most influential label of the indigenous knowledge so as to identify the most influential label. To achieve the aforementioned objective, the study sought to: (a) find out the most cited label; and (b) determine the citation impact of various labels through the determination of the h-index, average citations per paper and the number of authors per paper. The study focused on citations analysis and used Google Scholar as the source of relevant data. The Publish or Perish software was used to extract relevant data from Google Scholar. Results indicate that local knowledge (LK) is the most cited label, followed by indigenous knowledge (IK), traditional knowledge (TK), and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). In terms of the citation impact, measured by average citations per paper, TEK had the highest impact, followed by rural people’s knowledge (RPK) and local knowledge (LK). These mixed patterns of citedness of the literature published on indigenous knowledge implies that there is no outright winner among the labels although we can safely say that there are four core labels with which indigenous knowledge can be known. Further study, using a content analysis technique, is recommended to explore patterns that may validate or invalidate the findings of the current study, thereby leading to a more concrete conclusion on a uniform label that can be used to describe indigenous knowledge. In addition, we recommend further research to investigate the usage of the various labels by geographic regions, disciplines and other fields of knowledge to find out if differences do exist.