Hartwig and O'Barr state in The Student Africanist's Handbook that

This paper is the result of a study carried out in late summer 1976, to determine how well that statement stands. My approach was to go directly to the indexes (in the social sciences and humanities) to learn how many Africanist journals are actually indexed, and how well Africana materials are covered.

For this study “index” is interpreted in its broadest sense: any bibliographic list arranged in some order to allow a subject approach. Therefore, abstracts and bibliographies were included, as well as current contents and advanced contents indexes, in addition to the more “traditional” indexes, but machine-readable data banks were excluded. Also, I sought indexes that are current and that appear on a regular basis, at least annually. 1975 volumes (or the most recent) were used for comparison.