Abstract
This study sought to determine the bidirectional relationship between research output and impact and economic development in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Data was extracted from the African Development Indicators and the Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science citation indexes. A Pearson correlation and a regression analysis were performed to determine the relationships between the variables, as well as the influence of the bibliometrics indicators on the economic development indicators and vice versa. Results revealed high and significant correlation values between some research indicators (i.e. number of research articles, citations, and H-index) and some economic development (i.e. GDPcur and GNI) at p < 0.01. A mixture of weak, moderate and strong relationships was witnessed between research and economic development. The study further found that the number of articles contributed the most to, and therefore could be a factor affecting economic development, followed by the number of citations. A reverse analysis whereby the economic indicators were assessed to determine their influence on research indicated that the indicators had some influence on the number of articles and citations with the GDPcur and the GNI having statistically significant contribution in sub-Saharan Africa. The correlation and regression analyses of the two sets of indicators in selected countries, too, revealed strong and/or very strong relationships. The paper concludes that both the quantity (volume of research) and quality (or impact) of research are essential for economic development while research output and citation impact depend on economic development in not only individual countries but also in sub-Saharan Africa, as a whole. However, normalized indicators represented by the average citations per paper (Nac) as well as CPI and GDPcap produced very low and mostly statistically insignificant coefficients implying weak bidirectional relationships between research and economic development in some cases.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, S. (2009). Can foreign direct investment (FDI) help to promote growth in Africa? African Journal of Business Management,3(5), 178–183.
Andrés, A. (2009). Measuring academic research: how to undertake a bibliometric study. Oxford: Chandos Publishing.
Anyanwu, J. C. (2014). Factors affecting economic growth in Africa: Are there any lessons from China? African Development Review, 26(3), 468–493.
Ayieko, B. (2015). Research is a key driver for economic growth and development in Africa. Retrieved April 12, 2018, from http://www.nairobibusinessmonthly.com/research-is-a-key-driver-for-economic-growth-and-development-in-africa/.
Blanco, L. R., Gu, J., & Prieger, J. E. (2016). The impact of research and development on economic growth and productivity in the U.S. states. Southern Economic Journal, 82(3), 914–934.
Bloom, D. E., & Caning, D. (2008). Population health and economic growth. In M. Spence & M. Lewis (Eds.), Health and growth (pp. 53–75). Washington DC: World Bank.
Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Caeser, A. E., Chen, H., Udimal, T. B., & Osei-Agyeman, A. (2018). The influence of R&D on economic development in the West African sub-region. Open Journal of Social Sciences,6, 215–228.
Cronin, B. (1981). The need for a theory of citation. Journal of Documentation,37, 16–24.
Diodato, V. (1994). Dictionary of bibliometrics. New York: Haworth.
Donaldson, M. R., & Cooke, S. J. (2014). Scientific publications: moving beyond quality and quantity toward influence. BioScience,64(1), 12–13.
Easterly, W. (2003). Can foreign aid buy growth? Journal of Economic Perspectives,17(3), 23–48.
Ebrahim, N. A., Salehi, H., Embi, M. A., Habibi, F., et al. (2013). Effective strategies for increasing citation frequency. International Education Studies,6(11), 93–99.
Fayissa, B., & Nsiah, C. (2013). The impact of governance in economic growth. The Journal of Developing Areas,47(1), 91–108.
Feist, G. J. (1997). Quantity, quality, and depth of research as influences on scientific eminence: is quantity most important? Creativity Research Journal,10(4), 325–335.
Fosu, A. K. (2002). Political instability and economic growth: implications of coup events in sub-Saharan Africa. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology,61(1), 329–348.
Ghirmay, T. (2004). Financial development and economic growth in sub-Saharan African countries: Evidence from time series analysis. African Development Review,16(3), 415–432.
Glänzel, W. (2008). Seven myths in bibliometrics about facts and fiction in quantitative science studies. COLLNET Journal of Scientometrics and Information Management,2(1), 9–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09737766.2008.10700836.
Glänzel, W., & Schoepflin, U. (1999). A bibliometric study of reference literature in the sciences and social sciences. Information Processing and Management,35, 31–44.
Gould, D. M., & Gruben, W. C. (1996). The role of intellectual property rights in economic growth. Journal of Development Economics,48, 323–350.
Gui-Diby, S. L. (2014). Impact of foreign direct investments on economic growth in Africa: Evidence from three decades of panel analyses. Research in Economics,68, 248–256.
Gylfason, T., & Zoega, G. (2003). Education, social equality and economic growth: a view of the landscape. CESifo Economic Studies,49(4), 557–579.
Harnad, S. 2006. Maximizing research impact through institutional and national open-access self-archiving mandates. Retrieved June 4, 2018, from http://cogprints.org/4787/2/harnad-crisrev.pdf.
Haslam, N., & Laham, S. M. (2010). Quality, quantity, and impact in academic publication. European Journal of Social Psychology,40, 216–220.
Hudson, J. (2007). Be known by the company you keep: Citations—quality or chance? Scientometrics,71(2), 231–238.
Inglesi-Lotz, R, Chang, T & Gupta, R. 2013. Causality between research output and economic growth in BRICS countries.Retrieved April 12, 2018, from https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/43600.
Inglesi-Lotz, R., & Pouris, A. (2013). The influence of scientific research output of academics on economic growth in South Africa: an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) application. Scientometrics,95, 129–139.
Kaur, J., Ferrara, E., Menczer, F., Flammini, A., & Radicchi, F. (2015). Quality versus quantity in scientific impact. Journal of Informetrics,9(4), 800–808.
Keller, K. R. I. (2006). Investment in primary, secondary and higher education and the effects on economic growth. Contemporary Economic Policy,24(1), 18–34.
Lee, L. C., Lin, P. H., Chuang, Y. W., & Lee, Y. Y. (2011). Research output and economic productivity: a granger causality test. Scientometrics,89(2), 465–478.
Ntuli, H., Inglesi-Lotz, R., Chang, T., & Pouris, A. (2015). Does research output cause economic growth or vice versa? Evidence from 34 OECD countries. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology,66(8), 1709–1716.
Onyeiwu, S. (2015). Does lack of innovation and absorptive capacity retard economic growth in Africa? In A. K. Fosu (Ed.), Growth and institutions in African development (pp. 41–58). London: Routledge.
Rao, I. K. R., & Neelameghan, A. (1992). From librametry to informetrics: An overview and Ranganathan’s contributions. Libri, 42(3), 242–257.
Reitz, J. M. (2004). Dictionary for library and information science. London: Libraries Unlimited.
Rumsey, D. J. (2011). Statistics for dummies (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Savrul, M., & Incekara, A. (2015). The effect of R&D intensity on innovation performance: A country level evaluation. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences,210, 388–396.
Seglen, P. O. (1997). Citations and journal impact factors: Questionable indicators of research quality. Allergy,52, 1050–1056.
Smith, L. C. (1981). Citation analysis. Library Trends,30(1), 83–106.
Solarin, S. A., & Yen, Y. Y. (2016). A global analysis of the impact of research output on economic growth. Scientometrics,108, 855–874.
Sooryamoorthy, R. (2018). The production of science in Africa: an analysis of publications in science disciplines, 2000–2015. Scientometrics [published online first]. Retrieved May 15, 2018, from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2675-0.
Vinkler, P. (2008). Correlation between the structure of scientific: Scientometric indicators and GDP in EU and non-EU countries. Scientometrics,74(2), 237–254.
Walter, G., Bloch, S., Hunt, G., & Fisher, K. (2003). Counting on citations: a flawed way to measure quality. Medical Journal of Australia,178, 280–281.
Zaman, K., Khan, H. U. R., Ahmad, M., & Aamir, A. (2018). Research productivity and economic growth: a policy lesson learnt from across the globe. Iranian Economic Review,22(3), 627–641.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Onyancha, O.B. A meta-analysis study of the relationship between research and economic development in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Scientometrics 123, 655–675 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03390-z
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03390-z