Scientific publishing in West Africa: comparing Benin with Ghana and Senegal

Eustache Mêgnigbêto ()
Additional contact information
Eustache Mêgnigbêto: Bureau d’études et de recherches en science de l’information (BERSI)

Scientometrics, 2013, vol. 95, issue 3, No 18, 1113-1139

Abstract: Abstract We compared scientific indicators related to Benin, Senegal and Ghana. We collected data from Web of Science and used bibliometric indicators like annual production, language and type of publication, citable and cited documents, citations, h-index, field share, specialization index, and international collaboration rate. Results show that Benin performs well regarding the percentage of citable and cited documents, the share of production and the specialization index in the fields of Natural sciences and Agricultural sciences; it occupies the median position with respect to the production and the specialization index in the fields of Engineering and technology on the one hand and Medical and health sciences on the other hand, behind Ghana and ahead Senegal. It lays however behind Ghana and Senegal with respect to the total output, citations per citable or cited documents, h-index, the share of production and specialization index in the fields of Social science and Humanities; it has the highest international collaboration rate. The study revealed that the three countries cooperated less, and only if a third western country intervened. It pointed out the role of Western countries in driving collaboration among developing countries.

Keywords: Scientific research; Research assessment; Research policy; Informetrics; Benin; Ghana; Senegal; West Africa; 62-07 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-012-0948-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:95:y:2013:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0948-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0948-6

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().