Neuroscience research in Africa: Current status
Open accessAbstract
There are limited data on the contribution of the African continent to neuroscience research and publications. This review aims to provide a clear view on the state of neuroscience research among African countries, and to compare neuroscience research within the 52 African countries. A literature review search was conducted for all published articles by African authors in both local and international journals using Medline and other primary databases. Neuroscience represents 9.1% of the total medical publications. The highest percentage of neuroscience publications comes from South Africa. There is a positive correlation between the Gross Domestic Product and the total number of neuroscience publications among African countries. There is therefore an urgent need to develop strategies to improve neuroscience research in African countries.
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The publication and citation trends indicate an overall strength in basic rather than applied neuroscience research in the region.
“Even though by numbers applied neuroscience research dominates in Africa (Abd-Allah et al., 2016), these publication and citation trends indicate an overall strength in basic rather than applied neuroscience research in the region.”
From African neuroscience on the global stage: Nigeria as a model (2019) · cites this paper as Abd-Allah et al., 2016
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References 11 · Cited by 28
Research works printed but not linked: 7
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- Authors
- Abd-Allah, F., Kissani, N., William, A., Oraby, M. I., Moustafa, R. R., Shaker, E., El-Tamawy, M. S., & Shakir, R.
- Affiliations
- Cairo University (EG)
- University of Ghana (GH)
- Beni-Suef University (EG)
- Ain Shams University (EG)
- Corresponding author
- Abd-Allah, Foad
- Venue
- eNeurologicalSci
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-06
- Volume
- 3
- Pages
- 7-10
- ISSN
- 2405-6502 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5803076
- OpenAlex
- W2218743706
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 11
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 1.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- eNeurologicalSci (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Global Health and Surgery
- Keywords
- brain research, Africa, research output, scientific publications, gross domestic product, research capacity, South Africa, cross-national comparison
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