A Bibliometric Analysis of Health and Medical Journals: Issues in Medical Scholarly Communication in Africa
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Authors
Ezema, Ifeanyi
Onyancha, Omwoyo Bosire
Issue Date
2016
Type
Article
Language
en
Keywords
Bibliometrics , informetrics , citation analysis , health research , journal evaluation , health and medical journals , Africa
Alternative Title
Abstract
The study was conducted to examine the scholarly impact of health and medical journals in
Africa. A descriptive informetric research approach was used to analyse 134 health and medical journals hosted in the African Journal Online (AJOL) database. Harzing’s Publish or Perish (PoP) software was used to extract publication and citation indicators of the journals. These indicators include number of citations, number of paper publications, cites per year, cites per paper, and the h-index of the journals. The performance of the journals was equally examined in other major databases like Thomson Reuters and Scopus. Findings reveal that only 20 African countries contributed health and medical journals to the AJOL database with Nigeria and South Africa producing nearly 70% of the journals. A rank list of 29 journals was developed with South African Medical Journal and African Health Sciences ranking highest in the list respectively. Only 14 of the journals were found in Thompson Reuters while Scopus indexes only 38.8% of the journals. These findings challenge the criteria Thompson Reuters and Scopus use in the selection of journals for their databases.
Description
Citation
Ifeanyi J. Ezema and Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha (2016 A Bibliometric Analysis of Health and Medical Journals: Issues in Medical Scholarly Communication in Africa. Serials Review 42(2) :116-128
Publisher
License
Journal
Volume
Issue
PubMed ID
DOI
ISSN
1879-095X