Research productivity and main publishing institutions in Côte d’Ivoire, 2000–2016

BACKGROUND: The research productivity of countries commonly grouped within sub-Saharan Africa is as diverse as their cultural, economic, linguistic, political, and social profiles. While South Africa has been the science hub on the subcontinent for decades, publishing original research articles in the thousands, Mauritania struggles to have a single publication in international indexed journals in any given year. Detailed country-specific accounts on the co-evolution of research productivity and demographic and economic indicators from sub-Saharan Africa are lacking and render an accurate evaluation and cross-country comparison of internal research progress challenging. METHODS: We assessed the research productivity of Côte d’Ivoire, a francophone West African country that has gone through considerable socio-political unrest, for the period 2000–2016, and determined the main publishing institutions. We considered original research articles extracted from PubMed and Web of Science Core Collection, emphasizing life sciences and biomedical sciences. RESULTS: We found the quantity of publications doubling from 4.1 to 8.5 per million population and the ‘total product’ – a measure for quantity and quality of published articles – rising from 0.8 to 22.1 per million population between 2000 and 2016. Since 2010 there was a marked increase in the proportion of English publications and a concomitant drop in the proportion of articles with Ivorian first and last authors. The percentage of foreign author contribution increased from 38.7% in 2000 to 71.6% in 2016, suggesting an ‘internationalization’ of the country’s research production and output. Mixed authorship compared with ‘Ivorian only’ showed higher representation in journals with an official impact factor by Web of Science with proportions of 73% versus 28% for 2008 and 91% versus 45% for 2016. Two universities and university hospitals and three autonomous research institutions were consistently among the top 10 institutions publishing peer-reviewed material in three selected years (2000, 2008, and 2016). The main features of the most successful publishing institutions were research staff size, diversification of research portfolio and funding, multiple research bases across the country, and established and productive partnerships with foreign institutions. CONCLUSION: Since the turn of the millennium, research productivity in Côte d’Ivoire has steadily grown at an above regional and global rate despite recurring economic pressures and sociopolitical unrest. We have observed benefits of internationalization throughout this current analysis reaching from improved publishing standards to increasing resilience of research institutions in times of crisis.