Mapping the landscape of biomedical research in Nigeria since 1967

Abstract

This article maps the biomedical literature of Nigeria by source/origin of publications and authorships from 1967 to 2002. This mapping is expected to provide crucial information to both government and others taking funding and related decisions regarding biomedical research in Nigeria. Data was collected from MEDLINE. Scientists publishing on Nigerian biomedicine have written 6,820 articles in 295 journals/sources. Only eight of the 121 local journals that published biomedical research in Nigeria during the period were included in MEDLINE's listing (2.72%), while there were 32 (10.84%) regional and 255 (86.44%) external journals used. Local journals appeared to be more heavily used than regional and external ones. It was also shown that MEDLINE does not adequately represent Nigeria's biomedical literature.

Bibliometric analysis of quantity and quality of Nigeria’s biomedical literature

“…We have shown elsewhere that basic research publications are on the decline in Nigeria although they are more heavily co-authored when they occur. There is, however, an indication that both the quantity of papers and the authorship are increasing in the fusion category of both journals and papers, indicating that interdisciplinary research is an increasing research strategy among Nigerian biomedical scientists, a finding that could explain why multiple authorship is also on the increase among Nigerian biomedical scientists (Nwagwu, 2005).…”

“…Also, paper refers to any item published by any of the journals/channels indexed in Medline while channels refers to the serial and other outlets in which the papers were published. We are limited in this analysis by the indexing policy of Medline, which excludes citation data, in addition to not being comprehensive of Nigeria's scholarly channels (Nwagwu, 2005).…”

“…(iv) basic sciences are relatively absent because of the lack of required infrastructure facilities (Nwagwu, 2005).…”

“…This is exactly the situation in many developing countries, including Nigeria. The reasons for this situation have been exposed elsewhere (Nwagwu, 2005) where further explanations for the absence of bibliometric studies on the crucial field of biomedicine-defined by Medline as consisting of medical and biological disciplines-were also provided.…”

Patterns of authorship in the biomedical literature of Nigeria

“…Also, a study of laboratory investigations reported in the Journal of Neurosurgery between 1945 and 1995 found that the average number of authors per scientific paper rose from 1.89 to 4.6 (King, 2000). Generally, MEDLINE reports higher incidents than SCI and has shown that the average number of authors per paper has risen from 1.8 in 1966 to 4.6 in 1999 (Nwagwu, 2005).…”