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      Post-independence health research productivity in Portuguese-speaking African countries: A bibliometric analysis of 43 years of research and higher education in Mozambique

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          Abstract

          Background

          Africa has a high double burden of infectious and non-communicable diseases underscoring the critical need for robust scientific research. However, it is also associated with low scientific research productivity. Mozambique, which gained independence in 1975, serves as a poignant example. However, there remains a notable scarcity of evidence evaluating the country's trajectory in scientific and academic development. This study aims to evaluate 43 years of health-related scientific knowledge production through bibliometric analysis, focusing on key indicators. Additionally, it seeks to characterize the higher education institutions within the country.

          Methods

          The data was retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection using an advanced search tool with Boolean research strategies, covering the period from 1976 to 2022 for all PALOP and 1976 to 2019 for Mozambique. To map Mozambican higher institutions, information was sourced from the Ministry of Science Technology and Higher Education database. Descriptive statistics were employed to summarize the findings, while the VOSviewer program version 1.6.19 was utilized to visualize distance-based bibliometric networks, focusing on co-authorship among institutions and keyword co-occurrence.

          Results

          Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) contribute 2.5 % (10,933 out of 442,309) to Africa's total scientific output, with Mozambique leading at 63.6 % (6,951 publications) followed by Angola at 16.6 % (1,811 publications). All PALOP countries experienced decreased scientific productivity during the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Mozambique, over 70 % (1,710 out of 2,380) of health-related publications from 2011 to 2019 were concentrated in this period. Key journals for health sciences include PLOS ONE, Malaria Journal, and Tropical Medicine & International Health, focusing on HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. Higher education institutions in Mozambique show regional disparities, with 67.9 % in the South and only 8.9 % in the North, indicating significant inequality in their distribution across the country.

          Conclusion

          This study highlights Mozambique's significant progress in health research productivity over 43 years, establishing it as a leader among PALOP countries. The substantial increase in publications, particularly after 2008, underscores the nation's growing research capacity and commitment to addressing critical health challenges such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. However, regional disparities in higher education access and limited research contributions from private universities remain high in Mozambique.

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          Most cited references23

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          Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping

          We present VOSviewer, a freely available computer program that we have developed for constructing and viewing bibliometric maps. Unlike most computer programs that are used for bibliometric mapping, VOSviewer pays special attention to the graphical representation of bibliometric maps. The functionality of VOSviewer is especially useful for displaying large bibliometric maps in an easy-to-interpret way. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, an overview of VOSviewer’s functionality for displaying bibliometric maps is provided. In the second part, the technical implementation of specific parts of the program is discussed. Finally, in the third part, VOSviewer’s ability to handle large maps is demonstrated by using the program to construct and display a co-citation map of 5,000 major scientific journals.
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            A unified approach to mapping and clustering of bibliometric networks

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              Web of Science as a data source for research on scientific and scholarly activity

              Web of Science (WoS) is the world’s oldest, most widely used and authoritative database of research publications and citations. Based on the Science Citation Index, founded by Eugene Garfield in 1964, it has expanded its selective, balanced, and complete coverage of the world’s leading research to cover around 34,000 journals today. A wide range of use cases are supported by WoS from daily search and discovery by researchers worldwide through to the supply of analytical data sets and the provision of specialized access to raw data for bibliometric partners. A long- and well-established network of such partners enables the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) to continue to work closely with bibliometric groups around the world to the benefit of both the community and the services that the company provides to researchers and analysts.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Heliyon
                Heliyon
                Heliyon
                Elsevier
                2405-8440
                03 August 2024
                15 August 2024
                03 August 2024
                : 10
                : 15
                : e35767
                Affiliations
                [a ]Instituto Nacional de Saúde (INS), Marracuene, Mozambique
                [b ]Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (IHMT), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
                [c ]Departamento de Bibliotecología y Ciencias de la Información, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru
                [d ]Universidade Zambeze, Matacuane, Beira, Sofala, Mozambique
                [e ]Global Health and Tropical Medicine, GHTM, LA-REAL, Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical, IHMT, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal
                [f ]Centro de Estatística e Aplicações da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
                [g ]z-Stat4life, Lisbon, Portugal
                [h ]Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author. Instituto Nacional de Saúde (INS), Marracuene, Mozambique. assucenio.chissaque@ 123456ins.gov.mz
                [1]

                These authors contributed equally.

                Article
                S2405-8440(24)11798-7 e35767
                10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e35767
                11337052
                39170119
                b08d8d1c-eb5f-4e3c-8d12-e61516e6648d
                © 2024 The Authors

                This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                : 13 December 2023
                : 17 July 2024
                : 2 August 2024
                Categories
                Research Article

                health science research,higher education institutions,palop,productivity,bibliometric,mozambique

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