The use of bibliometric in determining the scientific and social impact of research publications at the University of Ghana

Abstract

The growing awareness of the importance of scientific research demands that science is measured using indicators that are valid. One of the validated tools for measuring scientific outputs is the use of bibliometrics. Bibliometric is a quantitative tool used to analyse scientific publication. The importance of bibliometric analysis hinges on two factors. First, the notion that scientific publication is an indicator of research output and secondly, the notion that citation from research publications is an indicator of scientific impact on the research community. Based on data extracted from Scopus (Elsevier) on the overview of publication output by subject area of the University of Ghana from 2009-2013, there is the indication that majority of the publications captured are skewed towards the natural sciences. Also, critical examination of the top 10 journals by number of articles from the University of Ghana between 2009 -2013 shows a skewed towards the natural sciences. This therefore affirms the position that most publications from the University of Ghana in international bibliometric databases comes from the natural sciences It is based on these observations that this article proposes that the usage of bibliometrics a lone to evaluate scientific outputs of researchers and among different research fields at the University of Ghana could lead to bias in research output assessment. The paper therefore recommends two sub-group of bibliometric indicators for assessing University of Ghana faculty members ' research outputs: internal documents and international bibliometric database