Fluorine research in South Africa and four benchmarking countries: Comparative mapping and assessment

Fluorine research has been identified as a priority area in South Africa and the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (NECSA) is embarking in an effort to expand its hydrogen fluoride and aluminium trifluoride production capacity. On the eve of those efforts this article reports the findings of an effort to map and assess fluorine research in South Africa in comparison to four other countries i.e. Malaysia, Australia, Germany and Italy. The results of the assessment are aimed at guiding future directions for fluorine research in the country, at identifying centres of expertise nationally where new research chairs could be established, at identifying international centres of expertise to be utilised for collaboration and of course for inter-temporal benchmarking of fluorine research in South Africa. South Africa is identified to be producing a small number of fluorine research publications in comparison to other countries like Germany and Italy which produce orders of magnitude larger number of publications and in comparison to country’s total research effort. Furthermore the relevant research effort appears to be dispersed geographically and in disciplinary terms. Relevant recommendations are provided with particular emphasis on the pluralistic science policy approach followed in the country.     

The state of science and technology in Africa (2000–2004): A scientometric assessment

This article reports for first time the state of science and technology in the African Continent on the basis of two scientometric indicators — number of research publications and number of patents awarded. Our analysis shows that Africa produced 68,945 publications over the 2000–2004 period or 1.8% of the World’s publications. In comparison India produced 2.4% and Latin America 3.5% of the World’s research. More detailed analysis reveals that research in Africa is concentrated in just two countries — South Africa and Egypt. These two counties produce just above 50% of the Continent’s publications and the top eight countries produce above 80% of the Continent’s research. Disciplinary analysis reveals that few African countries have the minimum number of scientists required for the functioning of a scientific discipline. Examination of the Continent’s inventive profile, as manifested in patents, indicates that Africa produces less than one thousand of the world’s inventions. Furthermore 88% of the Continent’s inventive activity is concentrated in South Africa. The article recommends that the African Governments should pay particular attention in developing their national research systems.     

Science and scientific collaboration in South Africa: apartheid and after

Scientific collaboration is growing in its importance; more so in Asian and African countries. This paper examines the scenario of science and scientific collaboration in South Africa which had passed through the colonial and apartheid regimes before it became a democracy in 1994. South African science under distinct political periods moved through some difficult periods but it did not badly affect the progress and direction of South African science. Science and scientific collaboration continued to grow under its major political phases amidst serious challenges. Despite internal conflict and boycott by the international scientific community, South Africa could move onto a stable and steady path of growth in science and collaboration under apartheid which is being carried on in the new South Africa. Collaborative research is encouraged at various levels of knowledge production and in science. The importance science and scientific development is gaining in today’s South Africa is remarkable.     

African regional innovation systems: bibliometric analysis of research collaboration patterns 2005–2009

Understanding the nature and dynamics of Africa’s collaborative research networks is critical for building and integrating the African innovation system. This paper investigates the collaborative structure of the African research systems, with focus on regions and integration. Drawing on a bibliometric analysis of co-authorship of African research publications in 2005–2009, we propose an empirically derived grouping of African research community into three distinct research regions: Southern–Eastern, Western, and Northern. The three regions are established and defined in terms of active co-authorship clusters within Africa, as well as through co-authorship links with non-African countries and regions. We examine co-authorship links both at the national and city levels in order to provide a robust and nuanced empirical basis for the three African research regions. The collaboration patterns uncovered cast light on the emerging innovation systems in Africa by pointing out the differing national, regional, and global roles of countries and cities within collaborative research networks. Lack of research capabilities is the primary factor arresting the development of African innovation systems, but our analysis also suggests that Africa’s internal research collaboration suffers from structural weaknesses and uneven integration. We also identify that South Africa, and some emerging new research hubs, hold critical networking function for linking African researchers.     

Scientometric research in South Africa and successful policy instruments

This document provides an analysis of scientometric research in South Africa and it discusses sources of growth in the country’s research literature in general. South Africa is identified to have limited expertise in the field revealed mainly during the last decade. However, the country is ranked 21st in the world among the countries publishing in the journal Scientometrics and it is the only African country with such a standing in the field. Identification of the forces affecting positively the growth in the number of research publications in the country indicates that the primary incentive fuelling the recent growth is the new funding formula in the country which subsidizes the universities by more than R100 000 for each publication that their staff produces. The increase in the number of journals indexed in the ISI Thomson Reuters database and the incorporation of social sciences at the NRF have also affected the growth of research publications, but to a lesser extent.     

Black Africa in the science citation index

According to a quantitative analysis of the publications of the Black African Countries indexed in the SCI between 1992 to 1998, Nigeria seems to be the leader in scientific production on the black continent during that period (the term ‘Black Africa’ refers to all African countries excluding South Africa, Maghrebi, and Egypt). However, an analysis that only takes into account the number of publications does not necessarily disclose very much about neither the dynamics of the respective scientific community nor about the representativity of the country’s production with respect to its total population. Therefore, the number of publications per country is compared with the respective total population. According to this method, Kenya turns out to be the leader in scientific-publication production and several other countries get higher ranks. Additionally, any evaluation of scientific production in that part of the world should also take into account the specific features of these countries, e.g. the difficulties in publication and the existence of a large number of unpublished texts.     

South–South research collaboration of countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

This study investigates South–South collaboration in research, and specifically collaboration among the 15 countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well as between the SADC and the rest of Africa. It was found that only 3% of SADC papers during 2005–2008 were jointly authored by researchers from two or more SADC countries (intra-regional collaboration), and only 5% of SADC papers were jointly authored with researchers from African countries outside the SADC (continental collaboration). In contrast, 47% of SADC papers were co-authored with scientists from high-income countries. The few instances of intra-regional and continental collaboration in the SADC are largely the product of North–South collaboration. Authors from high-income countries are included in 60% of intra-regional co-authored papers and in 59% of continental co-authored papers. Moreover, between 2005 and 2008, South Africa produced 81% of all SADC papers and 78% of all intra-regional co-authored papers. This implies that there is a highly unbalanced and unequal partnership that can best be described as a variant of North–South collaboration with the scientific giant in the South taking on the role of the ‘political North’. As a consequence, guidelines for successful North–South collaborations should be extended to include South–South collaborations that comprise highly unequal partners, as is the case between South Africa and the other SADC countries.     

Africa’s contribution to the worldwide research literature: New analytical perspectives,trends, and performance indicators

This paper examines general characteristics of African science from a quantitative ‘scientometric’ perspective. More specifically, that of research outputs of Africa-based authors published in the scientific literature during the years 1980–2004, either within the international journals representing ‘mainstream’ science, or within national and regional journals reflecting ‘indigenous science’. As for the international journals, the findings derived from Thomson Scientific’s Citation Indexes show that while Africa’s share in worldwide science has steadily declined, the share of international co-publications has increased very significantly, whereas low levels of international citation impact persist. A case study of South African journals reveals the existence of several journals that are not processed for these international databases but nonetheless show a distinctive citation impact on international research communities.     

Ranking Israel’s economists

One of the more important measures of a scholar’s research impact is the number of times that the scholar’s work is cited by other researchers as a source of knowledge. This paper conducts a first of its kind examination on Israel’s academic economists and economics departments, ranking them according to the number of citations on their work. It also provides a vista into one of the primary reasons given by junior Israeli economists for an unparalleled brain drain from the country—discrepancies between research impact and promotion. The type of examination carried out in this paper can now be easily replicated in other fields and in other countries utilizing freely available citations data and compilation software that have been made readily accessible in recent years.     

A baseline for the impact of academic patenting legislation in Norway

As the commercialization of academic research has risen as a target area in many countries, the need for better empirical data collection to evaluate policy changes on this front has increasingly been recognized. This need is exemplified in the Norwegian case where legislative changes went into effect in 2003 expressly to encourage greater commercialization through patenting research results. This policy ambition faces the problem that no record of the patenting activity of academic researchers is available before 2003 when the country’s “professor’s privilege” was phased out. This article addresses the fundamental difficulty of how to empirically test the effect of such policy aims. It develops a methodology which can be used to reliably baseline changes in the extent and focus of academic patents. The purpose is to describe the empirical approach and results, while also providing insight into the changes in Norwegian policy on this front and their context.     

Publication productivity and collaboration of researchers in South Africa: new empirical evidence

Apart from a few bibliometrical studies the South African scientific system is a scantly researched area and asking for more empirical evidence. This empirical study of academics and researchers (n = 204) from a selected province of South Africa examines the interrelationship between publication productivity and collaboration, and the sectoral differences between higher education institutions and research institutes. The study highlights the specific context of the scientific system in South Africa with its characteristics features of productivity and collaboration and shows how they are structurally facilitated and hindered. Being a prominent contributor to the development of science in Africa the study offers some interesting findings.     

Scientometric impact assessment of a research policy instrument: the case of rating researchers on scientific outputs in South Africa

The influence of the National Research Foundation’s (NRF) rating system on the productivity of the South African social science researchers is investigated scientometrically for the period from 1981 to 2006. Their output performance is mainly indicated by their research publications. Following international best practice in scientometrics as well as the behavioural reinforcement theory, we employed the “before/after control impact (BACI) method”, as well as the well known econometric breakpoint test as proposed by Chow. We use as control group the publications in the field of clinical medicine. The field is not supported by NRF and hence clinical medicine researchers are not affected by the evaluation and rating system. The findings show a positive impact of the NRF programme on the research outputs of social sciences researchers and the implementation of the programme has increased the relevant population of research articles by an average of 24.5% (during the first 5 years) over the expected number of publication without the programme. The results confirm the scientometric findings of other studies (e.g. that of Nederhof) that ratings promulgate research productivity.     

In-depth analysis on China’s international cooperation in science

It has been about 30 years since China adopted an open-up and reform policy for global competition and collaboration. This opening-up policy is accompanied by a spectacular growth of the country’s economy as well as visibility in the world’s scientific literature. Also China’ competitiveness in scientific research has grown, and is mirroring the development of the country’s economy. On the other hand, international collaboration of most countries dramatically increased during the last two decades and accompanied the growth of science in emerging economies. Thus the question arises of whether growth of competitiveness in research is accompanied by an intensification of collaboration in China as well. In the present study we analyse the dynamics and the national characteristics of China’s co-operation in a global context. We also study research profile and citation impact of international collaboration with respect to the corresponding domestic ‘standards’.     

Neo-colonialism and research collaboration in Central Africa

The study examines aspects of both neo-colonial ties and neo-colonial science in research papers produced by Central African countries. The primary focus is on the extent and pattern of neo-colonial ties and other foreign participation in the co-authorship of Central African research papers. The analysis revealed that 80% of Central Africa’s research papers are produced in collaboration with a partner from outside the region. Moreover, 46% of papers are produced in collaboration with European countries as the only partner, and 35% in collaboration with past colonial rulers. The top collaborating countries are France (32%), the USA (14%), and the UK and Germany (both 12%). Foreign powers also facilitate the production of regionally and continentally co-authored papers in Central Africa, where European countries participate in 77% of regionally co-authored papers. The practice of neo-colonial science, on the other hand, features in a survey of reprint authors of Cameroonian papers. The survey investigated specific contributions made by Cameroon coauthors to the research processes underlying a paper. Cameroonian researchers contribute intellectually and conceptually to the production of research papers, irrespective of whether the collaboration involves partners from past colonial or non-colonial countries. Their most frequent role in collaborative research with foreign researchers remains the conduct of fieldwork.     

Who’s who and what’s what in Brazilian Public Health Sciences

Introduction  The present study endeavours to provide information on what are the research interests of Brazilian Public Health and how authors can be ranked. Methods  Post-graduate faculty members ISI data are analysed according to regions. Number of paper and its citations, papers’ type-complexity-cooperation, Bradford’s Law, Shannon’s indexes, time dynamic functions, Lotka’s Law, and ranking functions are examined. Results  Current production was built up in the last 30 years at a rate of 9.6% articles/year and 12.6% citations/year. 66% of potential authors were present in ISI data records, 64% achieved at least one citation. Research fields do not much depart from the traditional PH purview. More than 66% of authors have just one paper and decrease is steep. Subtle differences call attention to the South region. Conclusion  Brazilian PH is mainly committed to classical research fields and ranking among authors is narrow.     

The impact of the socio-economic crisis of 2001 on the scientific system of Argentina from the scientometric perspective

In recent years a number of studies have focused on Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis and its political, social, and institutional repercussions. To date, however, no studies have analyzed its effects upon the country’s scientific system from a scientometric perspective, in terms of resources dedicated to scientific activity and the final output and impact. The present study does so by means of a set of scientometric indicators that reflect economic effort, human resources dedicated to research, publications, collaborative relations, and the international visibility of scientific contributions.     

A patentometric assessment of selected R&D priority areas in South Africa,a comparison with other BRICS countries

This study assessed the inventive activity through patents registered by South African researchers worldwide using the WIPO database. South Africa is the most prolific producer of patents in the African continent. In this study, the focus was on research priority areas documented in the South African government policy documents rather than the overall inventive output of the country. The research priority areas considered were ICT, nanotechnology, biotechnology, climate change, energy and health. Patents in the areas were compared with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries and Egypt. The comparison was done using the revealed technological advantage sometimes referred to as the specialisation index. It is found that the two African countries have not increased their patent share significantly and are yet to find their specialisation. It was found that while South Africa is doing well in terms of patenting compared to other developing countries, the profile of inventions being patented are not necessarily aligned with the priority areas as documented in government policy.     

Knowledge production through collaborative research in sub-Saharan Africa: how much do countries contribute to each other’s knowledge output and citation impact?

This paper examines co-authorship of research articles in Thomson Reuters citation indexes in order to assess knowledge co-production in selected sub-Saharan African countries. Two indicators, namely publications and citations, were analysed to establish the patterns of knowledge co-production and its scientific impact, respectively. The study found that knowledge production through collaborative research among sub-Saharan African countries is minimal and contributes only a small percentage when compared to collaboration between sub-Saharan African countries and their foreign counterparts. Similarly, the scientific impact of international collaboration was higher than that of continental collaboration. Countries belonging to the same geographic region contributed to each other’s knowledge production more frequently than they did to the countries outside their region. It is recommended that, for knowledge co-production in sub-Saharan Africa to improve, various measures such as encouraging student and staff exchange, hosting more regional conferences and encouraging research networks need to be put in place.     

Bibliometrics as a tool for measuring gender-specific research performance: an example from South African invasion ecology

Citations to published work are gaining increasing prominence in evaluations of the research performance of scientists. Considering the importance accorded to gender issues in South African science, it is surprising that (to our knowledge) no research has as yet ascertained the extent of sex differences in citations to the published work of scientists in this country. Our literature study shows that studies that have been conducted elsewhere tend to neglect in their analyses important gender-related and other factors, such as the sex composition of multi-authored papers and the extent of foreign co-authorship. Against this background, we illustrate the difficulties inherent in measuring the quality aspect of sex-specific research performance by means of an analysis of a dataset of articles (n = 229) that were published between 1990 and 2002 in the field of invasion ecology and in journals included in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science. Each article has at least one South African author address. The results indicate that foreign co-authorship is a better correlate of high citations than the sex of South African authors, and this is true irrespective of whether the annual citation rate or window period is used, whether or not self-citations are excluded, and whether or not the number of authors is controlled for by calculating fractional counts. The paper highlights these and other considerations that are relevant for future gender-focused bibliometric research, both in South Africa and beyond.     

Scientific publications of engineers in South Africa, 1975?C2005

In the production of scientific knowledge, as revealed by publication output, South Africa is at the forefront of many other countries in the developing world and in the African continent. This study examines for the first time the publication trends of South African engineering researchers for a period of 30?years since 1975. Drawing data from the ISI Web of Knowledge, this paper specifically looks at the publication patterns of engineering researchers in South Africa.