Nigeria’s top researchers (I)

Recently, I compiled a list of the most published scholars in Nigeria, including their total publications; total citations from their publications and number of documents that cited their works; the period within which the publications were made; and their h-indexes.

The decision to collect the list was influenced by the lived realities of being a scholar and researcher in Nigeria, where so many reasons exist to put you at a disadvantaged position so that you are unable to compete favorably with other scholars, within your discipline, from around the world. But despite these disadvantages, some scholars in Nigeria still defy the odds by refusing to be weighed down by the extreme improbability of researching and publishing success, and have thus published in some of the most notable academic journals around the world. These scholars deserve to be recognized and commended for their efforts.

To collect data presented in this piece, I used Scopus-the world’s largest abstract and citation database for peer reviewed literature. As a first step, I sourced all documents affiliated to Nigeria. The total documents sourced were 94,771 produced from 163 affiliations over the period 1910 to present. The documents surveyed cut across almost all subject areas: as medicine; agricultural and biological sciences; biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology; social sciences; environmental science; engineering; pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics; immunology and microbiology; earth and planetary sciences; chemistry; materials science; computer science; physics and astronomy; mathematics; arts and humanities; energy; veterinary medicine; chemical engineering; nursing; economics, econometrics and finance; business, management and accounting; multidisciplinary; psychology; neuroscience; health professions; decision sciences; dentistry and undefined subjects. The document types comprised original articles; conference papers; reviews; book chapters; letters; articles in press; notes; editorials; short surveys; erratum; books; abstract reports; conference reviews; reports and retracted documents.

However, as a guide to the scholars list, the following instructions and limitations apply.

First, the names presented here are those of scholars that are resident in Nigeria only, and who are currently affiliated to institutions within Nigeria. Thus, scholars whose most recent papers had affiliations to institutions abroad (even though their earlier papers may have had affiliations to institutions in Nigeria) were not considered within the survey because they were assumed to have left Nigeria.

Second, only scholars with a Scopus record of 100 publications and above were considered in this survey.

Third, the order in which the list is presented here ensures that scholars are listed in order of decreasing publications. The author with the most publications is listed first and the one with the least publications is listed last.

Fourth, some scholars do not have all their publications listed under a single Scopus author identifier. For such scholars with split or multiple identities, the number of publications under each identity was summed up to figure out their total number of publications.

Fifth, still, for authors with multiple Scopus author identities, upon the search of their names, the first profile typically contained the most publications, while the other profiles may contain as little as 1 publication (such as in the case of Wasiu Lanre Adeyemo), or 2 publications (such as in the case of Bolajoko Olubukunola Olusanya), although in the extreme case, such as that of Akintunde A. Sowunmi, the author was found to have 127 publications in the first profile, and 67 publications in the second profile. For these authors with multiple profiles, information on their number of citations were derived by summing up all citations from all profiles, while their h-indexes were derived from the profile that had the most publications. In the extreme case (that is, Akintunde A. Sowunmi), the h-index of the author was not reported due to the huge number of publications in his second profile which will affect genuineness of the result considerably.

Sixth, a scholar whose name is Orish Ebere Orisakwe of the Department of Experimental Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Port Harcourt, had 147 documents and 3517 total citations by 3254 documents, with publication range of 1988 to present, and h-index of 17. The author, was however, excluded from the list because other authors with the same surnames but different first names and middle names had their publications muddled up under Orish Ebere Orisakwe’s profile. The author profile on Scopus does not contain the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) to uniquely identify that the author had changed names in the past, and hence all publications listed under the profile belonged to the same person. Therefore, all information relating to Orish Ebere Orisakwe’s publications presented above cannot be carried forward as factual.

Seventh, the h-index, proposed, in 2005, by J. E. Hirsch, of the University of California at San Diego, is a guide to quantify an individual’s research output. The publication record of an individual and the citation record are used to derive the h-index. As an example, when a scholar has h-index of 10, it means that 10 papers out of their publications have at least 10 citations.

To be continued next week