Who are the most influential researchers in Library and Information Science in Africa?: An informetric and evaluative investigation of LIS researchers’ output and impact in mainstream citation sources. (RiP)
Ulrich T. Houzanme,
MLS Candidate, SLIS, Indiana University Bloomington:
[email protected] ; www.linkedin.com/in/houzanme
1-INTRODUCTION • “If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants” (Newton, 1675) • Bornmann, Anegon & Leydesdorff (2010a, 2010b) have demonstrated, an influential research draws rather from other influential researches • This grounds our main research question in justified theory and proven reality; so, in absence of literature providing the answer,
• • • • •
3-METHOD Measurement tools: h-index and m-index scores (m-index not yet applied) Data Sources: The three most prominent citation sources used: WoK, Scopus; GS (Publish or Perish & Scholarometer) Data inquiry type: Citations in all scholarly publications formats in LIS and affiliated with each African country Data integrity and cleansing /purification: Country affiliation inspection, records de-duplication, author disambiguation Analysis: impact ranking per country, regions, continent, official country language. Descriptive statistics. Comparisons and in-/validation of prior theories, practices or researches. 4-PRELIMINARY CONTINENTAL RANKING
7
5-PRELIMINARY REGIONAL RANKING
18
LAWANI, SM (NG) Ingwersen, P (ZA) 16 6
Ocholla, DN (UG)
AIYEPEKU, WO (NG)
ALEMNA, A (GH) SICHEL, HS (ZA)
Who are the most influential researchers, in LIS, in Africa?
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Eastern Africa Name Ocholla, DN Sooryamoorthy, R Gupta, S MCHOMBU, KJ KAUNGAMNO, EE Ikoja-Odongo MOHAMEDALI, ON
h-index WoS 4 3 2 2 2 2 2
Country Uganda Kenya Ethiopia Tanzania Tanzania Uganda Uganda
Name Ocholla, DN Ikoja-Odongo MCHOMBU, KJ
GS 9 6 5
Country Uganda Uganda Tanzania
Central Africa (Middle Africa) Name TANKOANO, J DERNIAME, JC
WoS 1 1
Country Gabon Gabon
Name TANKOANO, J DERNIAME, JC
GS 0 0
Country Gabon Gabon
Nothern Africa Name Sharif, A Atlam, ES Morita, K
WoS 2 2 2
Country Lybia Egypt Egypt
Name Sharif, A Atlam, ES Morita, K
GS 2 0 0
Country Lybia Egypt Egypt
Southern Africa Name Ingwersen, P
WoS 3
Country South Africa
Name Ingwersen, P
GS 16
Country South Africa
AINA, LO
8 8
Botswana Botswana
Name LAWANI, SM AIYEPEKU, WO ALEMNA, A
GS 8 4 9
Country Nigeria Nigeria Ghana
Braa, J (ZA) 5 Ocholla, DN (UG) 12
LAWANI, SM (NG)
Sooryamoorthy, R (KN)
Mutula, Stephen M(BW)
4 10 AINA, LO (BW) Ingwersen, P (ZA)
8
2-COLLATERAL QUESTIONS These questions inform the study : • What does a literature review hold on the topic of ranking researchers, in LIS, Africa? •Where to get publications and citations statistics on LIS researchers affiliated with Africa? •what is influence in this research context and how best to compute it in ranking LIS authors on that basis? •what do the rankings and tools reveal? •what’s the validity and significance of the results/findings?
3
6
2
4
Mutula, Stephen M AINA, LO
2 2
Botswana Botswana
Mutula, Stephen M
1 2
0
0 h-index (WoK)
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
h-index (GS)
Western Africa Name LAWANI, SM AIYEPEKU, WO ALEMNA, A
WoS 6 4 2
Country Nigeria Nigeria Ghana
6-PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS: Out of 53 African countries searched, 28 have data available in WoK ; ZA and NG rank the same since Ocholla (2007) Results show impact of authors in LIS and per publication affiliation to African countries, not authors’ overall h-index WoK/Scopus used to find authors, then GS to in-/validate scores, and not as discovery tool (due to ‘messiness’) GS h-index inflated, in part, due to lack of control for affiliation data ; GS data collection is the most time consuming WoS ranking altered by GS data ; WoK vs. GS correlation is 0.027 (very weak); non redundant result is complimentary Google Scholar yield most data for LIS literature/citations search on African countries. Affiliation data control needed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We recognize and thank Profs. , Blaise Cronin, Cassidy Sugimoto, Staša Milojević, Howard Rosenbaum and Chaoqun Ni, for their teachings and support. Particularly, we are indebted to Profs. Cronin, Milojević & Sugimoto for their time, advice, resources and recommendations. Special thanks to my classmates for their comments.
