A Scientometric Analysis of Africa's Health Science Journals Indexed in International and Regional Databases: A Comparative Analysis

Apatsa Selemani; Kondwani Wella; Yen-Fu Chen; Marta Vicente-Crespo; Olalekan Uthman; Jude Igumbor

doi:10.3389/ijph.2023.1606415

A Scientometric Analysis of Africa's Health Science Journals Indexed in International and Regional Databases: A Comparative Analysis

Int J Public Health. 2024 Jan 15:68:1606415. doi: 10.3389/ijph.2023.1606415. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Apatsa Selemani^{1

2}, Kondwani Wella¹, Yen-Fu Chen³, Marta Vicente-Crespo^{2

4}, Olalekan Uthman³, Jude Igumbor²

Affiliations

¹ KUHES Libraries, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, Blantyre, Malawi.
² School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
³ Medical School, Warwick University, Coventry, United Kingdom.
⁴ African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), Nairobi, Kenya.

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to compare the geographic coverage, citation impact, subject trends and authorship collaboration pattern of African health science journals indexed in international and regional databases. Methods: Data was collected from Ulrichs web serials directory, Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, PubMed, Google scholar, African Index Medicus (AIM) and African Journals Online (AJOL) between February 2023 and May 2023. Data was analysed using summary descriptive statistics such as percentages and interquartile ranges, and through network visualisation. Results: More than 40 African countries had no any health science journal indexed in WoS, whereas 20 African countries did not have any health science journal indexed in AJOL and AIM. The Journal of Advanced research was the top performing journal on almost all journal metric lists such as Google scholar's H5-Index, SNIP, Journal Impact Factor, and Citescore, except Journal Citation indicator. Conclusion: The coverage of African health science journals by international citation databases is still limited which result in low scientific impact of many African health science journals. Authorship collaboration is related to historical ties among countries.

Keywords: African journals; research evaluation; research impact; research metrics; scholarly communication.

MeSH terms

Africa
Bibliometrics
Databases, Factual
Humans
Journal Impact Factor
Periodicals as Topic*

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA). CARTA is jointly led by the African Population and Health Research Center and the University of the Witwatersrand and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (Grant No. G-19-57145), Sida (Grant No: 54100113), Uppsala Monitoring Center, Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and by the Wellcome Trust (reference no. 107768/Z/15/Z) and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, with support from the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science in Africa (DELTAS Africa) programme. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the Fellow.