Sub-Saharan Africa's biomedical journal coverage in scholarly databases: a comparison of Web of Science, Scopus, EMBASE, MEDLINE, African Index Medicus, and African Journals Online.
IF 2.9 4区 医学Q1 INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE
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引用次数: 1
Abstract
Objective: This study aims to find out the coverage of biomedical journals published in Sub-Saharan Africa in four authoritative international databases-Web of Science, Scopus, MEDLINE and EMBASE and two Africa-focused scholarly databases-Africa Journals Online (AJOL) and African Index Medicus (AIM).
Methods: Lists of active journals that are published in the 46 Sub-Saharan African countries were retrieved from the Ulrich periodical directory to create master journal lists. Unique journals from other databases that were not found in Ulrich were added to the master journal list. The six databases included in this study were searched for journals on the master lists.
Results: Only 23 of the 46 Sub-Saharan African countries had at least one biomedical journal. Only about one-quarter (152) of the 560 biomedical journals from Sub-Saharan Africa were found in at least one of the biomedical databases. South African journals accounted for more than 50% of all the Sub-Saharan journals in the international scholarly databases. AJOL contains the highest number of biomedical journals from Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Scopus and EMBASE. AJOL asserts its importance by covering the highest number of unique journals and having a representative number of journals in all biomedical sub-disciplines.
Conclusion: The majority of studies from Sub-Saharan Africa are left out when biomedical evidence-based researchers only retrieve studies from authoritative international databases. Searching Google Scholar and the African research databases of AJOL and AIM would increase the number of studies from the region.
撒哈拉以南非洲的生物医学期刊在学术数据库中的覆盖:Web of Science、Scopus、EMBASE、MEDLINE、African Index Medicus和African Journals Online的比较。
目的:了解撒哈拉以南非洲地区发表的生物医学期刊在web of Science、Scopus、MEDLINE和EMBASE四个国际权威数据库以及非洲期刊在线(Africa journals Online, AJOL)和非洲医学索引(African Index Medicus, AIM)两个非洲学术数据库中的覆盖情况。方法:从Ulrich期刊目录中检索撒哈拉以南非洲46个国家出版的活跃期刊列表,建立主期刊列表。在Ulrich中找不到的来自其他数据库的独特期刊被添加到主期刊列表中。在本研究纳入的6个数据库中检索主列表中的期刊。结果:46个撒哈拉以南非洲国家中只有23个拥有至少一本生物医学期刊。来自撒哈拉以南非洲的560种生物医学期刊中,只有大约四分之一(152种)在至少一个生物医学数据库中被发现。南非期刊占国际学术数据库中所有撒哈拉以南地区期刊的50%以上。AJOL收录的撒哈拉以南非洲地区生物医学期刊数量最多,其次是Scopus和EMBASE。AJOL通过涵盖最多的独特期刊和在所有生物医学子学科中具有代表性的期刊数量来证明其重要性。结论:当基于生物医学证据的研究人员只从权威的国际数据库检索研究时,大多数来自撒哈拉以南非洲的研究被遗漏了。搜索Google Scholar以及AJOL和AIM的非洲研究数据库将增加来自该区域的研究数量。
期刊介绍:
The Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) is an international, peer-reviewed journal published quarterly that aims to advance the practice and research knowledgebase of health sciences librarianship. The most current impact factor for the JMLA (from the 2007 edition of Journal Citation Reports) is 1.392.