Computing research in South Africa : a scientometric investigation
Date
2019
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists
Abstract
Limited attention has been afforded to mapping the ‘landscape’ of South African computing research. Prior studies have
considered singular sub-disciplines, publications, or publication types. Given the growing prominence of computing
disciplines, it is necessary to identify the patterns of research production, publication, collaboration, and impact of South
African computing research. This study presents a scientometric investigation in this regard. Through the analysis of
data accessed from the Scopus citation enhanced bibliographic database, the investigation presents findings in relation
to annual research production, institutional differences in outputs, topics, collaboration, and citation impact. While
characterised by institutional differences, over the period considered, South African computing research output has
increased at a greater rate than that of South African research at large. Additionally, despite accounting for a greater
proportion of all outputs, conference papers account for a smaller proportion of citations relative to journal articles or
book chapters. Corresponding to previous investigations, there exists a tendency towards applied computing topics in
contrast to more theoretical topics. Finally, the collaboration network was shown to be particularly de-centralised with
many researchers clustered around institutions. The findings are of interest to all researchers conducting computing or
related research in South Africa.
Description
CITATION: Parry, D. A. 2019. Computing research in South Africa : a scientometric investigation. South African Computer Journal, 31(1):51-79, doi:10.18489/sacj.v31i1.674.
The original publication is available at https://sacj.cs.uct.ac.za
The original publication is available at https://sacj.cs.uct.ac.za
Keywords
Computing research, Computers -- Research, Computer Science, Information resources management -- Research, Scientometrics
Citation
Parry, D. A. 2019. Computing research in South Africa : a scientometric investigation. South African Computer Journal, 31(1):51-79, doi:10.18489/sacj.v31i1.674.