Bibliometric profile of the African Academy of Sciences medical and health sciences fellows

The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) is the preeminent science academy on the African continent, but there is currently no information on the academic productivity of the fellowship members. This study investigated the bibliometric parameters of the AAS medical and health sciences fellows. The demographic information (year of induction, gender, and region of employment in Africa) of the 80 medical and health sciences fellows were obtained from the AAS website. Subsequently, the bibliometric information (total number of publications, H-index scores, citation, and co-authorship counts) were extracted from the Scopus database. The majority of the fellows were from the East (36%) and West (33%) African regions (χ(2) = p < 0.001); the North (6%) and Central (4%) regions were vastly underrepresented. Although only 34% of the AAS fellows were women, there was no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05) in the bibliometric parameters of both genders. The year of induction as a fellow and region of employment in Africa significantly (p < 0.05) influenced the bibliometric parameters. For all the fellows combined, their H-index mean (SD) score is 27.9 (17.0), while the median score for the total number of publications is 100, H-index is 27.5, and the citation and co-authorship count is 2,894 and 446, respectively. The fellows from the West African region had the highest number of publications (Mean = 212), citations (Mean = 9,437), and co-authorship count (Mean = 975), and the South African fellows had the highest H-index score (Mean = 40.8). The data presented provide insight into the bibliometric productivity of African scientists compared with their peers from other science academies around the world. Similarly, the data may assist burgeoning scientists aspiring to be AAS fellow set realistic goals toward achieving the stipulated H-index benchmarks.