The impact of African science: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The number of scientific papers published by researchers in Africa has been rising faster than the total world scientific output in recent years. This trend is relevant, as for a long period up until 1996, Africa's share of the world scientific output remained below 1.5 %. The propensity to publish in the continent has risen particularly fast since 2004, suggesting that a possible take-off of African science is taking place. This paper highlights that, in parallel with this most recent growth in output, the apparent productivity of African science, as measured by publications to gross domestic product, has risen in recent years to a level above the world average, although, when one looks at the equivalent ratio after it has been normalized by population, there is still a huge gap to overcome. Further it is shown that publications from those few African countries whose scientific communities demonstrate higher levels of specialization and integration in international networks, have a higher impact than the world average. Additionally, the paper discusses the potential applications of the new knowledge that has been produced by African researchers, highlighting that so far, South Africa seems to be the only African country where a reasonable part of that new knowledge seems to be connecting with innovation.

Research growth and citation impact of Tanzanian scholars: A 24 years scientometric study

“…For instance, South Africa accounted for 64% of the region's 2014 World Future Council (WFC), followed by Egypt, Kenya, Algeria and Tunisia (Nature, 2015). Another research also reported almost similar findings that the leading countries in terms of research outputs were South Africa, Egypt, Tunisia and Nigeria (Confraria and Godinho, 2015). It is therefore important to have a complete picture of research productivity and level of collaboration of a certain region or country in order to determine gaps critical for socio-economic development.…”

“…Science, technology, and innovation are widely acknowledged as important components in achieving sustainable economic development goals Toivanen and Ponomariov, 2011;Inglesi-Lotz and Pouris, 2013;Confraria and Godinho, 2015).…”

“…The African scientific outputs have been growing at a rapid rate than the world average, although the share of the Africa"s scientific output at the global level has remained low (Schemm, 2013;Confraria and Godinho, 2015). For instance, Schemm (2013) reported that the share of Africa"s research outputs to the world increased from 1.2% in 1996 to around 2.3% in 2012.…”

“…Further, evidence shows that the research output in Tanzania is considerably less than other countries in the African region (Abrahams et al, 2009;Boshoff, 2010;Pouris, 2010;Confraria and Godinho, 2015;Onyancha, 2016). For instance, Abrahams et al (2009) In another study, Pouris (2010) reported that South Africa published almost 14 times more publications than the second country in the list-Tanzania, with a total of 4184 publications from 1994 to 2008.…”

Bibliometric Measures of Research Output of Lower Middle Income Economies

“…In view of this, Ponomariov and Toivanen (2014), recommends that emerging economies shed off the tag of 'imitators' to 'innovators' by building strong domestic knowledge capacities to spur innovative activities. In the advancement of technology, the socio-economic development of countries is enhanced with innovation and availability of resources (Milenkovic et al, 2014;Dobrota et al, 2012;Confraria and Godinho, 2015). This paper uses an exploratory trend analysis to unravel interestingness measures across lower middle income countries in the 6 continents of the world as far as research in science-based disciplines is concerned from year 2000 to 2012.…”