Journal indexing and scientific impact of Africa’s public health research: current status, barriers, facilitators and opportunities

Abstract

Background: African health research has limited global visibility due to underrepresentation of African journals in major citation databases, which reduces their scholarly impact. However, there is limited evidence concerning barriers and enablers of African health science journal indexing, hindering efforts to improve their visibility and impact. Aim: This thesis sought to investigate challenges, enablers, and opportunities for improving journal indexing and the scientific impact of African public health research. Methodology: A sequential mixed-methods approach was used, incorporating a scoping review, scientometric analysis, analytical cross-sectional analysis, in-depth interviews (IDIs), and a discrete choice experiment (DCE). The scoping review analyzed bibliometric and scientometric studies of African health research. The scientometric and analytical cross-sectional studies utilized the web scraping technique, and manual collection of journal metrics for the former, and country- specific data for the latter. The analytical cross-sectional study compared African health science journals with western European health science journals. The IDIs purposively recruited 18 editors from 7 African countries while the DCE recruited 86 African journal editors. The study was guided by the research impact payback model and the post-colonial theory. Findings: The study found limited representation of African journals in indexing services such as Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed. Some countries were entirely absent in the indexes, highlighting the restricted visibility of African health research. A country’s economic status was a significant determinant of journal indexing between African and western European health science journals. Barriers and facilitators were multifaceted; structural inequalities influenced by post- colonial legacies that shaped funding, infrastructure, and access to indexing services. Development of alternative inclusive research evaluation indicators, and indexing services for African context, was seen as an important direction to take. Conclusion: The study highlights the need for systemic reforms to address existing structural inequities in knowledge production and dissemination. It recommends developing inclusive research evaluation indicators and establishing context-specific indexing platforms to enhance the visibility and impact of African health research.