Discoverability of African Journals by Google Scholar and Inclusion in Scopus

Introduction

African researchers contribute to the advancement of knowledge in their fields and provide important insights into the issues affecting their communities. African Voices in creativity and learning, as researchers and interlocutors in relation to various global health institutions/policies, are critical despite the legacies of colonial research and practices.¹ Despite the percentage of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) share of global research increasing from 0.44% to 0.72% between 2003-2012, the region still accounts for less than one percent of the world’s research output.² African scientific research outputs are not adequately discoverable on international platforms and the internet at large since they are not indexed.³ African researchers as keen contributors to knowledge as a whole and as a global public good.¹ However, they still face the challenge of limited international recognition by the subject matter experts.⁴ The failure of international recognition is a key contributor to the research inequalities which are more pronounced in social sciences, humanities, arts, and related fields.⁵ Many African researchers publish in journals that are hosted in local repositories, based at universities or institutions.⁶ African researcher opts to publish to their institutional repositories due to the absence of connections to international databases because of financial constraints. The performance of African institutional repositories remains below average thus making the African researchers’ output not discoverable since they can’t be connected to international repositories.⁷ The reasons for this include language barriers and limited funding that reduces the scope of the studies as well as their capacity to do cutting-edge research. In addition, non-white researchers are underrepresented in editorial boards relative to the expected share by their quota of authorship and are less likely to be invited to review articles for journals, even after controlling for factors such as publication records and academic affiliation.^8–12 This has an impact beyond the representation per se since editors act as “opinion formers, gatekeepers, and arbiters of disciplinary values”^13,14 and studies have shown the existence of bias against non-English names in education assessment, evaluation of skill sets, and the peer-review process.¹⁵ Thus, African journals stand to play an important role in mitigating the aforementioned factors and improving their discoverability could lead to increased awareness of important health information, improved health outcomes, and more robust scientific discourse that is representative of the continent’s contexts. In this study, we aim to map and describe the current state of discoverability of African journals on international platforms and determine factors associated with their discoverability.

Journal indexing is being used to add journals to databases or indices to facilitate searching and retrieving information about academic journals, their contents, and their content producers. Journal indexing is important to the reach, reputation, and impact of journal articles since many scholars prefer submitting articles to journals indexed by leading indexers as they are perceived to be of good quality.¹⁶ Journal indexing services typically use a set of criteria to evaluate the quality and relevance of a journal’s content for a database and/or index and such criteria include the peer-review process, citation count, and impact factor.¹⁷ Journals that are indexed are perceived to be of higher quality and receive a higher number of citations hence more visibility.¹⁸ The more the journal is indexed in many databases, the more it becomes discoverable.¹⁶

Various platforms/systems have been set up to increase journal access and discoverability. They include Google Scholar (GS) platform, Scopus platform, Open Access (OA) system, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) platform, International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) platform, International Network for Advancing Science and Policy (INASP) platform, Web of Science (WoS) platform and PubMed platform. Over time, several discovery services have emerged but there isn’t one that indexes all the journals that exist.¹⁹ The Scopus is an internationally recognized scientific database that provides valuable insights into the academic landscape¹³ by providing comprehensive and reliable information to increase the discoverability of academic research and ensure that it is widely recognized and utilized within the academic community.²⁰ While Scopus is not free, Google Scholar is a free search engine²¹ that is most widely used for both non-academic and academic content.²² This search engine offers the most comprehensive coverage, making it ideal for finding research outputs and valuable information for evaluating research products published in journals from developing countries.²³

A journal’s inclusion in these databases and indices depends on various factors. They include: (i) the journal’s open access status (OA), (ii) the journal being listed in the directory of open access (DOAJ), (iii) the journal’s presence on the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) portal, (iv) the journal publisher being a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), (v) the journal being hosted on the International Network for Advancing Science and Policy (INASP) and (vi) the journal publisher’s geographic location.

OA journals provide unrestricted online access to their content and their articles are made freely available online without any financial, legal, or technical barriers²⁴ and are available to anyone with an internet connection to read, download, copy, distribute, print, or search. These bridge the digital divide by providing equal access to information and knowledge for researchers in Africa and other low-income countries (LICs) and also inadvertently, have a higher number of citations.²⁵ However, these OA journals still require publication fees and these can be a barrier to publishing here.²⁴

The Directory of Open Access (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory that indexes high-quality, peer-reviewed OA scholarly journals to make them accessible. It is important to note that these often have inclusion criteria that must be met, that is, the journal must provide sufficient information about itself and the publication process and it must adhere to best practices of OA publishing that have been agreed upon, namely licensing and copyright policies.²⁶ DOAJ uses inclusion criteria which include ease of identifying contact and identifying contact and identity of the publisher, clarity on the type of peer review, whether the article within the journal is archived/indexed, fees charged, guidelines provided for authors on the website of the publisher, the journal publisher’s membership of a recognized industry initiative such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is a unique identifier assigned to a serial publication, such as a journal, magazine, or newspaper. This number is an eight-digit code that is used to identify the publication to distinguish it from other publications, to improve the discoverability and management of serial publications²⁷ and to facilitate the organization and retrieval of serial publications.²⁸ It is widely recognized as an essential tool for librarians, publishers, and researchers. To receive an ISSN, a journal must provide basic information about itself (its title, its publisher, its editorial board, and its frequency of publishing new editions) and is then placed on the ISSN’s portal. Furthermore, all journals present on the portal adhere to the standards set by the ISSN International Centre, which include publishing the journal regularly, using a consistent title, and providing accurate bibliographic information.²⁹

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is a non-profit organization that provides guidance and support to publishers, editors, and authors in the conduct of ethical research and publication practices. COPE has been recognized for its role in promoting ethical standards in academic publishing, including its impact on the discoverability of research. By providing guidance and best practices for authors, editors, and publishers, COPE helps to ensure that the published work is of high quality and is free of ethical misconduct.³⁰ Journal publishers become COPE members by agreeing to the COPE code of conduct, which includes following ethical guidelines for research and publication, maintaining editorial independence, and ensuring the quality and integrity of the journal.³⁰

The International Network for Advancing Science and Policy (INASP) is a non-profit organization that works to strengthen the capacity of individuals and institutions in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) to produce, share, and use research and knowledge for sustainable development. The network curates a list of journals and provides information about journals’ editorial policies, peer-review processes, and publication standards and their efforts have helped to ensure that research produced in LMICs is widely recognized and cited, thereby addressing the “knowledge gap” between LMICs and other countries.³¹ For journals to be hosted on INASP, they must be indexed in recognized databases, such as Scopus, WoS, or PubMed, and obtain a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which can be a challenge for journals with limited resources.³² INASP uses the Journal Publishing Practices and Standards (JPPS) to assess journals for inclusion. The standards include; whether the journal has met basic requirements for at least two years (one star), whether the journal is compliant with the quality criteria of editorial publishing practice (two stars), the consistency of the journal in all technical and editorial publishing best practices of the JPPS (three stars).

Journal publishing in Africa has been growing in recent years and it is important to harness the increase in the number of African-based publishers emerging in the continent’s research arena.¹⁹ There must, therefore, be concomitant efforts to increase the discoverability and accessibility of research produced on the continent and to promote the use of African research in decision-making processes. Journal publishers based in Africa are key to the development of a vibrant research community in the region and have enabled endeavors to ensure that the knowledge produced in Africa is widely recognized and used.³³

This study examined the factors associated with the discoverability of African research by, Google Scholar and inclusion in Scopus to characterize the current state of discoverability/inclusion.

The two platforms differ in how they enhance the discoverability and inclusion of academic content, as well as in the types of content they support. Scopus is an internationally recognized scientific database that requires a subscription to access comprehensive and reliable information included in it. On the other hand, Google Scholar is a free search engine that is most widely used for both non-academic and academic content.²² Additionally, Google Scholar is a crawler-based search engine unlike Scopus.¹⁶ Google Scholar discovers and indexes academic research by discovering the content using the search engine. These two indexers focus on all disciplines unlike an indexer like PubMed which has the primary focus on life sciences and biomedical sciences.¹⁶ Google Scholar and Scopus are currently the most comprehensive search engines in varied disciplines.²¹ This information is vital for ameliorating the discoverability of African research and producers and of African research to ensure that efforts that are geared towards regional agendas are contextual and relevant to African society.

Methods

The methods section development followed the Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health Research (EQUATOR) reporting to improve reproducibility and ensure validity.³⁴

Results

Journals identified in AJOL and Sabinet repositories

A total of 1,190 journals were identified and retrieved from the AJOL platform and the Sabinet repository during the search period (March 2023). A total of 74 duplicates were removed, and analysis was conducted using data about the remaining 1,116 journals, as shown in ( Figure 1). All the journals identified were hosted by African institutions.

Figure 1. The process of identifying journals.

Discussion

This study focused on characterizing the various factors associated with the discoverability of African research work by Google Scholar and inclusion in Scopus. African journals were nearly four times more likely to be discovered on Google Scholar than being included in Scopus. These findings concur with a study done which found that Google Scholar consistently includes a large percentage of citations across all thematic areas (93%-96%), ahead of Scopus (35%-77%), and finds nearly all the Scopus (92%) citations.²² Our findings indicated there were three main predictors of African journals on at least one of these two platforms, that is, (i) the listing of the OA journal in DOAJ, (ii) the presence of the journal on the ISSN portal, and (iii) the membership of the journal’s publisher on COPE. This information is crucial for strategizing the editorial process of journals in Africa with an aim of higher discoverability and inclusion of the research that they publish. Furthermore, African researchers can make informed decisions about which journals are best suited to maximize the visibility of their research outputs.

Our finding that African journals generally have lower discoverability by Google Scholar and inclusion in Scopus has been outlined in previous studies^42,43 which showed that journals in Africa were less discoverable than their international counterparts and this was due in part to constrained financial resources and reduced submissions by African authors who prefer to publish in international journals.⁴³ Additionally another study conducted on biomedical journals in Sub-Saharan Africa established that, only one quarter was found in at least one of the biomedical databases.⁴³ Interestingly, a journal being OA alone was not a significant predictor of being discoverable by Google Scholar and inclusion in Scopus, and a journal had to be both OA and listed on DOAJ to be discoverable/included in at least one of the platforms. Being OA is necessary but not sufficient to significantly predict discoverability and inclusion. These findings contradict earlier findings which showed that Google Scholar has a higher coverage of OA African journals than NOA journals.⁴⁴ We found that of the 354 journals that were discoverable by Google Scholar, only 42.4% were OA journals. However, when an OA journal was listed in the DOAJ it was noticeably more discoverable than those that are not. We note that while being OA alone does not improve the journal’s discoverability and inclusion, being listed in DOAJ gives journals an important advantage of being discoverable/included in at least one platform (Google Scholar and Scopus) over those that are not listed. This is in line with DOAJ’s objective to ensure that journals are accessible to as many people as possible. As such African journals should adopt editorial processes that would ensure that they are eligible for listing in DOAJ to increase the journals’ discoverability and access to their research content.

The presence of the journal on the ISSN portal was a significant predictor of the journal being included and discoverable by Google Scholar, Scopus, and at least one of them. These findings are consistent with a previous systematic study that found that the presence of an ISSN was a significant predictor of journals’ discoverability by Google Scholar.⁴⁴ Having this ISSN is vital for qualifying for listing on the ISSN portal and African journals should consider adhering to ISSN portal inclusion criteria to harness this discoverability advantage. It is also key to maintain those standards and the subscription to ensure that the journal continues to be listed in the ISSN portal.

For those journals where the publisher of the journal was a member of COPE, the journal was more likely to be included and discovered by at least one platform. As of now and to our knowledge, there are no studies that examined the association between COPE membership of a journal publisher and the journal’s subsequent discoverability and inclusion. This study pioneers the characterization of this association with the recommendation that African journals endeavor to meet the requirements of being members of COPE to increase their discoverability and inclusion in either Google Scholar, Scopus, or both.

Other studies have found that listing on INASP increases journal discoverability and inclusion in databases²⁸ but our findings show that this listing is not important for increasing the chance that a journal will be included and discovered on Google Scholar and/or Scopus. Furthermore, our study shows that having an Africa-based publisher was not likely to significantly affect whether or not a journal was published on these two platforms.

This study established that the effect of DOAJ listing on the journal’s discoverability by Google Scholar and inclusion in Scopus varied depending on whether the journal’s publisher was a COPE member. Journals might face specific challenges or characteristics that reduce discoverability and inclusion (e.g., technical indexing issues, specific policies of Google Scholar, or Scopus). Journal discoverability is not always straightforward and may be influenced by more nuanced factors beyond general quality markers like DOAJ listing or COPE membership. However, there is a need to align the quality markers to align with the specific policies of Google Scholar and Scopus.

There were a few limitations in the implementation of this study. For one, while AJOL and Sabinet list journals from Africa, it is probable that some are not listed and that this may not be random. What’s more, this study is descriptive and was conducted and concluded in July 2023. We acknowledge that a subsequent search of these two platforms might yield different results. Finally, discoverability by Google Scholar and inclusion in Scopus evolve as the curation of one and the algorithms of the other evolve.

In summary, the findings from this study contribute new evidence to the currently small, but growing, evidence on the discoverability and inclusion of African journals on international platforms surrounding the key drivers for poor journal discoverability. This evidence is vital for driving interventions that improve the identified major factors that increase African journals’ discoverability and inclusion in databases. Promoting the journals in academic communities is key and this can be achieved through target marketing and outreach efforts. As a matter of action, a potential area for research would examine the effectiveness of different marketing strategies (targeted email campaigns, paid advertising, and search engine optimization among others). Furthermore, encouraging African researchers to submit their work to African journals and to cite the work published in these journals in their research would build a critical mass of demand that would stimulate journals to evolve to meet this demand. Additionally, it is crucial to foster partnerships between African journals and international publishers and indexing databases to make these journals eligible for these databases. We also explored other factors that may explain the discoverability of African journals on these platforms and found that they were not very meaningful for determining a journal’s discoverability and/or inclusion in the platforms. Specifically, these factors included (i) being an OA journal, (ii) being present on the INASP listing and (iii) having an Africa-based publisher. While these were not important factors for African journal discoverability and inclusion, it is worth considering in future efforts towards such studies.

Conclusion

Although the discoverability of African journals on Google Scholar and inclusion in Scopus is low compared to non-African journals, improvements of a structural nature are possible with interventions aimed at improving factors that predict discoverability and inclusion. Therefore, programs aimed at improving the discoverability and inclusion of African journals should focus on developing and/or upgrading these journals to ensure they are listed on the ISSN portal. Interventions aimed at ensuring African journals are discovered/included in either Google Scholar, Scopus, or both should focus on making the OA journals listed in DOAJ and ensuring the journals’ publishers are COPE members. Journals might face specific challenges or characteristics that reduce discoverability and inclusion (e.g., technical indexing issues, specific policies of Google Scholar, or Scopus). Journal discoverability is not always straightforward and may be influenced by more nuanced factors beyond general quality markers like DOAJ listing or COPE membership. However, there is a need to align the quality markers to align with the specific policies of Google Scholar and Scopus.