Analysis of Scientific Research in Selected Institutions in South t~frica: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

This paper reports the preliminary findings on South Africa's most productive authors, journals and research universities. The paper makes use of Scientometric techniques to assess the quantity and quality of science research papers published by researchers in various journals. The results show that four of the most cited authors represent 40.80% of the total count. The citations per paper for these authors are Bilic N (16.40), Michael JP (6.36), Sacht C (6.00), and Marques HM (4.60). The majority of citations are found within Chemistry (37.0%), followed by Physics (26.0%), Medicine (7.40%) and Biology (7.40%). Analysis of 18 journals indexed in the Journal Citation Report (JCR), revealed that only the South African Journal of Geology had an impact factor above one. The journal with the largest numbers of original papers was the South African Journal of Science with 89 articles and 1397 total citations in 2003. Statistical analysis, with Pearson's correlation coefficient (p-value <0.05), indicated significant correlation between journal productivity and citation frequency, as well as between citation frequency and immediacy index.