A bibliometrics study of the research impact of the National Research Foundation=ratedresearchers in the North West

Abstract

One of the key activities undertaken by the National Research Foundation of South Africa is to rate researchers in public universities and various research institutes. The NRF rating system is a valuable tool to benchmark the quantity, quality and impact of South African researchers with international peers. Public universities in South Africa have been the main beneficiaries and enablers of the NRF rating system with their strategies explicitly stating an increase in the ratings of researchers as one of the main strategies. There is general belief in the country’s universities that having a high concentration of NRF-rated researchers enhances the prestige and ranking of the institutions. Universities, therefore, are in a constant competition to attract, produce, recruit and retain rated researchers. Despite these strategies, there is a paucity of studies in South Africa that are conducted to determine the impact of these researchers at the various institutions. This quantitative study sought to establish the research impact of the NRF-rated researchers’ output at the North-West University from 2006 to 2017. Specifically, this study strove to establish the research output, and the academic and societal impact of the research output of rated researchers at North-West University. It used the altmetrics and bibliometrics methods. Various tools, including the three main bibliographic databases (Google Scholar (GS), Web-of-Science (WoS) and Scopus) and two academic social media platforms (ResearchGate (RG) and Mendeley) were used to collect data. The citations in the three bibliographic databases were used as proxy for academic impact while reads and readerships in RG and Mendeley were used to determine societal impact of the rated researchers. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), particularly the Spearman’s Correlation Analysis, was used to test the relationship between citations in the three bibliographic databases and reads and readerships in the two academic social media platforms. The main findings of this study confirm that the majority of NWU’s rated researchers’ output emanated from GS (8276), followed by Scopus (5536) and then WoS (5003). GS output had 108 279 citations, output in Scopus had 71 137 citations while those in WoS had 60 174 citations. In terms of penetration of academic social media, there were 6 026 research outputs in RG which were read 676 919 times and 5 850 in Mendeley with 142 621 readerships. There were weak but strong correlations between RG and all three bibliographic databases’ citations. The relationship between the three bibliographic databases’ citations and Mendeley readerships was found to be stronger.