A Bibliometric Analysis of Microbiology Publications in Sub - Saharan Africa during Years 2000 to 2014

Abstract

Context: Research, development, and innovation are becoming increasingly important in the rapidly changing political, financial, and social landscape of the world. It is important to understand the landscape of research and development in developing courtiers, as research and development has been shown to improve developing countries’ economic growth. The aim of this study was to obtain a snap shot of a bibliometric analysis of the publications in the field of microbiology in sub - Saharan Africa (SSA). Among other questions, this study aimed at determining the most published authors, the most common areas of research, and institutes with the greatest number of publications in this field. Evidence Acquisition: This study was conceptualised using 3 steps: creating a search strategy that encompasses the major fields of microbiology, creating and executing a search query, and analysing the results. Scopus was chosen as the search engine since it is the largest database of peer - reviewed literature and includes original articles, reviews, conferences, letters, editorials, and articles - in - press, etc. Conclusions: Although at first glance it may seem that SSA contributed very little towards (less than 2%) the worlds microbiology literature, a closer examination of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on research proves that SSA countries are making inroads in publishing literature. Most literature published over the last 14 years has been journal articles in journals with an impact factor of 3.7. In 2014, most articles were published in journals with an average impact factor of 6.1. In terms of the number of publications by the top authors in the field, it seems as if they quantitatively match other international countries like Brazil and India.