Why the study?
The study was conducted to define the landscape and key players of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine research in Africa.
This bibliometric analysis highlights the landscape of African Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine research, noting a decline in top-cited articles and the prominent roles of the USA, Southern African, and East African countries.
Low citation rates signal limited global reach of African anesthesia research; extends mapping of publication disparities and capacity needs.
Background Scientometrics is used to assess the impact of research in several health fields, including Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine. The purpose of this study was to define the landscape and key players of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine research in Africa. Methods The authors searched Web of Science from inception to May 4, 2020, for articles on and about Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine in Africa with ≥ 2 citations. Quantitative (H-index) and qualitative (descriptive analysis of yearly publications and interpretation of document, co-authorship, author country, and keyword) bibliometric analyses were done. Results The search strategy returned 116 articles that had a median of 5 (IQR: 3-12) citations on Web of Science. The most frequent journals were Anesthesia and Analgesia (18, 15.5%), World Journal of Surgery (13, 11.2%), and South African Medical Journal (8, 6.9%). Most (74, 63.8%) articles were published on or after 2013, and seven authors had more than 1 article in the top 116 articles: Epiu I (3, 2.6%), Elobu AE (2, 1.7%), Fenton PM (2, 1.7%), Kibwana S (2, 1.7%), Rukewe A (2, 1.7%), Sama HD (2, 1.7%), and Zoumenou E (2, 1.7%). The bibliometric coupling analysis of documents highlighted 10 clusters with the most significant nodes being Biccard BM, 2018; Baker T, 2013; Llewellyn RL, 2009; Nigussie S, 2014; and Aziato L, 2015. Dubowitz G (5) and Ozgediz D (4) had the highest H-indices among the authors referenced by the most-cited African Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine articles. The U.S.A. had the largest global node, while South Africa and Uganda had the largest African nodes. The most prominent keywords were anesthesia, mortality, and surgery. Conclusion This study highlighted a decline in the number of top-cited African articles and the roles of the U.S.A, Southern African, and East African countries in scholarly output. Future studies should focus on understanding the time trends of the publications.
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Kanmounye et al. (2020) studied this question.
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