Research output is low, but increasing, and focuses on public health at new universities in southern Ethiopia

ObjectiveThe aim of this work is to describe the developments in research publication at three new universities in southern Ethiopia. DesignBibliometric analysis. MethodsWe retrieved references from 1998 to July 2021 from the Web of Science database using the authors affiliation. English language publications and peer-reviewed journals were included. The bibliometric analyses were conducted by using Web of Science and the bibliometrix package (version 3.1) under R version 4.0.5. ResultsWe reviewed 1019 scientific papers, and there was a substantial increase in the number of publications over the years, especially since 2016. The publications were in 304 different journals with 2606 authors; the number of documents per author was 0{middle dot}39. Most of the studies were descriptive, 17 (1{middle dot}7%) were clinical trials, 60 (5{middle dot}9%) were case-control studies, and 83 (8{middle dot}1%) were cohort studies. Topics related to public health were the most often studied. The average citations per publication was 9{middle dot}1. The most frequently cited papers occurred with international collaboration. A total of 886 (84%) publications were "All Open Access" and only 5% of the papers were published in Ethiopian journals. We identified ten groups that maintained scientific production for 8 years or more, mainly in research on malaria and vector borne diseases, nutrition, microbiology, and various public health issues. One of seven papers were published with support from external funding, and with collaborative links with the United States, Europe, and New Zealand. ConclusionsThere has been a remarkable increase in health research at the three universities. The institutions should enhance the research culture, strengthening their health research capacity by encouraging good research practice and ensuring connections between health research and implementation.