This Note analyzes data related to the visibility of the science being done in
Africa. More specifically, the geographical distribution of citations to scientific
papers produced at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, and the University of
Nairobi in Kenya, in the fields of botany,
zoology,
mathematics and physics is
compared with similar data collected for two other peripheral Commonwealth
universities. The hypothesis that botany and zoology may be more locally
oriented (and thus more locally
cited)
than physics and mathematics was
confirmed. Consistently high citation visibility has been observed in Britain for
research carried out in all four peripheral Commonwealth universities. The high
rates of intra-national citations received by scientists at Ibadan and Nairobi seem
to indicate that the existing system of scientific communication affords
significant visibility for the scientific work of developing nations.
