Epistemic injustice in scientometric analysis of African academic literature

Scientometric analyses are widely used to study research, yet they often rely on global citation databases with uneven coverage of the certain countries and regions. This study examines how such limitations are addressed within the literature itself. Using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, a corpus of scientometric studies on African research is analyzed to explore how authors construct African science, justify methodological choices, and position themselves in relation to database exclusions. The analysis shows that African scholarship is frequently rendered partially invisible, framed as a hypothetical risk, or naturalized as an inevitable limitation of bibliometric data. At the same time, discourses of excellence and methodological authority are mobilized to sustain the validity of these studies while deferring responsibility for inclusivity to future research. These practices may reproduce forms of meta-insensitive or active ignorance, contributing to contributory epistemic injustice in representations of African science.