scholarly journals Bibliometrics of Cambodian Science: subjects, researchers and impact in the Science Citation Index Expanded

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 678-687
Author(s):  
Julián Monge-Nájera ◽  
Siyan Yi ◽  
Yuh-Shan Ho

Introduction: Cambodia is a small agricultural tropical country for which only two small scientometric studies, published five years ago, were available until now. Objective: To identify, for Cambodian research, subjects, outlets, authors, institutions, citations and recommendations. Methods: The data were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded (January 04, 2021) using the word “Cambodia” for the period 1972 to 2019. Results: We retrieved 3 689 documents: for the half century covered, the yearly presence of Cambodia in the index has grown strongly, to 325 articles and 6 555 authors in 2019 alone. Most documents are articles in English about health, particularly infectious and tropical diseases. Most international collaboration is done, by country, with the USA, France, and Thailand; and by institution, with Mahidol University, the Pasteur Institute and Oxford University. The most productive institutions are the Cambodian Ministry of Health and the Cambodian National Center for Parasitology. The main outlets are PLoS One, Malaria and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Cambodian articles are cited for up to 33 years, with a peak of 4.5 citations within the first two years. Those in English, or from well-funded foreign projects, have more citations in this particular index; especially if they are about malaria, hepatitis or influenza. Conclusions: The nature and impact of Cambodian science outside the SCI-EXPANDED remain unknown, but publications in that index have increased, concentrate on solving local problems, and depend heavily on international collaboration, following a well-known pattern of science in tropical countries. We suggest a funding system based on international peers who assign funds to the most productive researchers with minimal bureaucracy, so that local research is done on a greater variety of topics and with less participation of Cambodian researchers as low-level members in foreign projects.

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 1582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Raoul Tchuifon Tchuifon ◽  
Hui-Zhen Fu ◽  
Yuh-Shan Ho

Cameroon is one of the six countries of Central Africa with more than 20 000 000 residents. To characterize the Cameroon research performance, Cameroonians publications in the Science Citation Index Expanded during the period of 1936-2015, indexed in the Thomson Reuters SCI-EXPANDED database, were studied in this work. All documents of that period with Cameroon in the address field were included in the study. The document type, language, trend and collaborations were analyzed, as well as the output of different subject categories. Performances of countries, institutions and authors, including total, single, collaborative, first author, and corresponding author publications were also analyzed. Articles were analyzed by the scientific output and research performances of individuals, institutions and collaborative countries with Cameroon. Analyses included 8 457 articles (85 % of 10 591 Cameroonian publications). These bibliometric analyses of Cameroonian publications provided interesting insights concerning authors, institutions and collaboration patterns. Results showed that research in Cameroon was highly dependent on foreign collaborations, and the international collaboration was responsible for the increasing number of publications over the years. It was found that the articles with either first authors or corresponding authors from outside Cameroon got more citations than the others, and that the articles without any international collaboration had lower citations. The number of articles indexed by SCI-EXPANDED has seen an increase in terms of Cameroonian articles that is considerably greater that the increase in number of all articles in SCI-EXPANDED. Articles were more frequent than other types of publication and they were mostly in English. The University of Yaoundé I ranked top one in inter-institutionally collaborative articles, the rank of the total inter-institutionally collaborative articles, and the rank of first author articles and corresponding author articles. The University of Yaoundé I also was in an absolute leading position from 1970s to 2015, followed far away by the other institutions. The categories of tropical medicine, plant sciences, environmental and occupational public health, and infectious diseases, represented the largest number of published articles. Even though physics and chemistry dominated the ranking of the top 20 best Cameroonian authors, an independent mathematics article was the most cited, with 60 citations in 2015 to a Cameroonian author. The top three productive researchers were T. C. Kofane, B. T. Ngadjui, P. Woafo, all from University of Yaoundé I. France and the USA dominated the ranking of countries with strong scientific collaboration with Cameroon.


2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Osei Boamah ◽  
Yuh-Shan Ho

Ghana is a West African country for which apparently there are limited scientometric studies. The objective of this study was to analyze the Ghanaian contribution to knowledge captured in the Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) database from 1936 - 2016. The following data were analyzed: document type, the language of publication, publication trend, Web of Science Subject Categories, Journals, international collaboration, institutions, authors, and highly cited articles. Indicators such as the total number of articles, first author articles, and corresponding author articles were applied to compare publication performance for collaborative countries and institutions. Also, number of single institute articles: number of nationally collaborative articles: number of internationally collaborative articles (S : N : I) were also used to compare publication characteristics of institutions in Ghana. Results showed that publication trend increased from 1998 to 2015, with researches focusing on health and medicine. PLoS One was the top productive journal, and the most collaborative country for Ghana articles was the USA. Contributions from the University of Ghana were ranked the top one institution for Ghana articles, and higher citation papers were found in international collaborations. In conclusion, the contribution to knowledge of Ghanaian authors is massive in the areas of public, environmental and occupational health and tropical medicine but the impact factor is higher for immunology, infectious diseases, and microbiology articles. Therefore, Ghanaian authors are encouraged to publish more articles in high impact factor journals with Thomson Reuters Scientific indexing in order to have their researches recognized by the existing international databases.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyễn Thị Nha Trang ◽  
Julián Monge-Nájera ◽  
Yuh-Shan Ho

Introduction: The economy of Vietnam, a highly populated tropical country with a per capita gross domestic product of $ 8 000, is growing rapidly, but there are few recent studies of general scope about its scientific productivity and how it compares with other tropical countries. Objective: To identify trends in Vietnamese science and compare them with trends in other tropical countries. Methods: We extracted data about scientific papers, in all disciplines that had Vietnam as country in the Science Citation Index Expanded for the period 1991 to 2018, focusing on type of publication, language, subject, authorship, collaboration, , and citations. Results: Vietnam publishes more document types than other tropical countries, and those in this particular database are mostly in English, albeit most Vietnamese science is published in Vietnamese and not covered by the index. The primary categories were multidisciplinary materials science, mathematics, and applied mathematics. Most collaboration was done with the USA, Japan, South Korea, and France. A large number of articles were published by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, and the most frequent foreign collaboration was with University of Oxford. Conclusion: the tropical countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia studied in our project have some similarities but also crucial differences. Science is developing rapidly in Vietnam and the production of articles in Vietnamese, which represent the vast majority of research in the country but is not included in this database, should also be studied.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 1090 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuh-Shan Ho ◽  
Linda Biaw Leng Lim ◽  
Julián Monge-Nájera

Brunei is a small tropical country located in southeast Asia for which there are no previous bibliometric studies. Here we analyze papers published by Brunei scientists from 1973 to 2016 in the Science Citation Index Expanded and compare results with other tropical countries. We identified 1 547 publications and 11 document types. The most productive categories were ecology, multidisciplinary geosciences, inorganic and nuclear chemistry, and environmental sciences. Singapore Medical Journal published most of these papers, and the three most productive institutions were Universiti Brunei Darussalam, RIPAS Hospital, and Universiti Teknologi Brunei. UK and Malaysia were the most frequent collaborating countries. M.A. Ali from the Universiti Brunei Darussalam was the most prolific author and a Brunei independent article written by C.K. Morley from the Universiti Brunei Darussalam in 2002 had the highest number of citations of the whole period and the highest number in 2016. The tropical countries of Central America and Asia have a few similarities but also important differences, and both are highly heterogeneous in scientific organization and productivity.


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