Ethiopian-affiliated research in Scopus and Web of Science: A bibliometric mapping

Abstract

This paper explores the research landscape in Ethiopia using 20-year data drawn from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The focus was to assess yearly research productivity, key research areas, journals in which researchers publish, collaborating countries, languages used to publish papers, and major agencies that fund research. The findings indicate that research productivity has been increasing over the past decades, with biomedical research dominating much of the output. Addis Ababa, Gondar, Jimma, Mekelle and Bahir Dar universities were identified as the institutions with a relatively higher level of research productivity than the other universities in the country. The top five collaborating countries for Ethiopian researchers were found to be the US, UK, India, Germany, and South Africa. The dominant language of research was English. However, since the country has a strong tradition of producing knowledge in local languages, this finding indicates the need to incorporate research published in African languages in journals and databases.

Publication output of Bahir Dar university: A Scopus-based bibliometric overview

“…They assert that the underrepresentation of Ethiopian languages in research publishing may limit the reach and impact of this knowledge within the Ethiopian academic community and society at large. Furthermore, Yallew and Dereb (2021) have emphasized the need to investigate the reasons behind the underrepresentation of Ethiopian languages in research publishing and devise strategies to overcome this challenge.…”

“…Against this backdrop, the present study endeavors to assess the research output of Bahir Dar University (BDU) as the institution celebrates its 60 th anniversary and needs to see its current status in terms of research productivity. It is noteworthy that the university is among the top five most researchproductive universities in the country, according to Web of Science and Scopus-indexed bibliometric measurements (Yallew & Dereb, 2021). For this study, publication productivity refers to the research output of Bahir Dar University published in Scopus-indexed databases over the past 22 years, including articles, books, book chapters, conference papers, proceedings, and other publications.…”