Space Science Research in Africa: Publication Trends, Citation Analysis, and Collaborative Patterns

Abstract

Abstract Content assessment of research metrics plays a pivotal role in the evaluation of scientific productivity globally, especially in a selected field and region. Data from 28 Space‐Science Journals spanning 2014–2023, from the Scopus‐database, based on African publication output, citations, views‐counts, and Field‐Weighted‐Citation‐Impact (Field‐Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI)) metrics were used. The results revealed that Africa contributes only 3.2% of the world publication volume in Space Science. From the African output, South‐Africa leads with 40.9%, followed by Nigeria (14.3%) and Egypt (13.6%). These three countries contribute ≈70% of the African publication volume. For the citation metrics, Africa contributed 5.0% of the world volume. Publication in Journal of Advances in Space Research is more sought after by African Authors, while Astrophysics and Space Science journal recorded the highest African‐to‐world publication output percentage (11.3%). African authors show a preference for publishing in Journals with high percentile score and citation rates. Citation‐wise, South‐Africa accounted for 64% of the total volume from Africa. Only seven countries present citation metrics above 1% of the total volume. South Africa (46%), Morocco (10%), Egypt (9%), Namibia (7%), and Nigeria (7%) are the five countries with publication View counts of above 4,000. Only Ethiopia and South‐Africa had FWCI above the world average, with values of 1.47 and 1.25 respectively. North Africa region dominated the appearance list of the 10 top countries in publication, citation, counts views and FWCI while Southern Africa leads in volume. The work further situates the uniqueness/global acceptance of the Scopus and Web‐of‐Science databases as tools for research publication assessment.