Citation Visibility of Africa's Science

This Note analyzes data related to the visibility of the science being done in Africa. More specifically, the geographical distribution of citations to scientific papers produced at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, and the University of Nairobi in Kenya, in the fields of botany, zoology, mathematics and physics is compared with similar data collected for two other peripheral Commonwealth universities. The hypothesis that botany and zoology may be more locally oriented (and thus more locally cited) than physics and mathematics was confirmed. Consistently high citation visibility has been observed in Britain for research carried out in all four peripheral Commonwealth universities. The high rates of intra-national citations received by scientists at Ibadan and Nairobi seem to indicate that the existing system of scientific communication affords significant visibility for the scientific work of developing nations.