Can informetrics shape biomedical research? A case study of the HIV/AIDS research in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Biomedical research is burgeoning as both new dangerous diseases and new healing methods emerge. Informetrics has successfully been used as a method for studying multidisciplinary fields with significant success. I define informetrics as methods (or as a research field) that use/uses mathematical and statistical techniques and/or models to examine patterns that show up not only in publications but also in many aspects of life – as long as these patterns deal with information and are widely applied in the evaluation of research performance, among other areas. Informetrics measures can be divided into descriptive and evaluative measures, commonly referred to as production (publications) count and citation analysis, respectively. Whereas the former has continued to gain popularity in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in regard to the assessment of research output of researchers, the latter is rarely applied.

The lecture focuses on the research evaluation, methods of research evaluation, and pros and cons of using informetrics techniques to evaluate research performance. Further, the lecture addresses the application of informetrics to examine whether or not informetrics can be used to shape biomedical research, with special reference to HIV/AIDS research in sub-Saharan Africa. In that regard, it reports on an informetrics perspective of the relatedness of opportunistic diseases and other factors (i.e. risk factors, pre-disposing factors, other sexually transmitted diseases, and tropical diseases) to: • demonstrate the use of informetrics techniques in assessing the relatedness of a disease to the pathogens that are associated with it • reveal that informetrics can be used to support and/or inform medical opinions regarding the relationship/influence of certain factors/diseases with/on a given disease, e.g. HIV/AIDS

This lecture concludes that the application of informetrics, using various techniques or methodologies associated with it, to shape research in different fields/disciplines, is feasible.