Global impacts of scientific publications by academic staff: a case

Background: The impacts of scientific research by an individual or institution are measured using various bibliometric indices such as the h -index and citations index among others. Objective: The present study assessed the global impacts of scientific publications by academic staff of the College of Medical Sciences, University of Maiduguri (CMS-UNIMAID) using selected bibliometric indices. Methodology: The data (demographic data, research experience, and the number of publications) of the 202 academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID were obtained from the records submitted for the 2019/2020 annual appraisal. The h -index, citations index (CI), number of documents (ND), RG score, research interest (RI), citation/item, and citation/year of the staff were extracted from Google Scholar, Publons, ResearchGate, and Scopus using th authors search until 25 December 2020. Staff and publication online visibilities were determined. Descriptive statistics were prepared for all records obtained and subjected to appropriate inferential statistics. Results: The mean age and research experience of the staff were 45.4±9.2 and 13.9±9.6 years, respectively. The majority (p<0.05) of the staff were male (85.1%), had a PhD/Professional Fellowship (61.4%), and were senior academic staff (53.5%). A total of 4940 publication entries were submitted for the appraisal. Only 2.5% of the staff were visible on all platforms with staff online visibility of 63.9, 55.5, 15.8, and 5.0% (p<0.05) on Scopus, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and Publons, respectively. Male staff (68.0%) were more visible (p<0.05) than their female counterparts (40.0%) on Scopus while senior academic staff were more visible (p<0.05) than junior academic staff on all platforms except Publons. Publication online visibility was highest (p<0.05) in Google Scholar (78.4%) and ResearchGate (65.9%) than Publons (28.0%) and Scopus (25.1%). The mean h -index, CI, and ND were 8.3±1.1, 401.8±97.8


Introduction
Scientific research has significantly contributed to the socioeconomic, technological, and medical 1,2 advancement of every nation.Most recently, many initially unknown facts about novel SARS-CoV-2 have been unraveled through a series of well- Scientific research findings are disseminated by publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at scientific fora.These ensure widespread access creating an avenue for global research impact depending on other factors.For instance, a good article on trending issues published by renowned authors in a well-ranked journal with a wide audience may have a huge impact than a poorly written article published by inexperienced authors in an unindexed journal.It is extremely challenging to 8 use a single model to quantify research impact.However, web-based scientific platforms such as Google Scholar, Publons, ResearchGate, and Scopus, have provided objective indices to evaluate the impact of research outputs of individuals and organizations.Notable among these indices is hindex, developed by Jorge E. Hirsch, which is the 9 number of papers with citation number ≥ h.It has 10,11 been effectively used for ranking individuals,  Recently, a descriptive cross-sectional study reported low academic research productivity among the academic staff of the college with an average number of articles 28 published in 3 years put as 6.6 papers.However, the study involved three-year research productivity of only 25% of the staff and determined research productivity and not research impact.The present study assessed the global impact of scientific publications by academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID using some bibliometric indices on Google Scholar, Publons, ResearchGate, and Scopus.

Materials and Method
The descriptive study was conducted between December 2019 -December 2020.A database was created for all academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID who hold permanent or contract appointments with the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria, and whose names appeared on the 2019/2020 annual appraisal exercise.Personal information (name, age, sex, rank, department, faculty, date of appointment, and year of first publication) were obtained from the staff personal records available in the Office of the Provost.Four web search engines with publication ranking systems, namely: Google Scholar ( h t t p s : / / s c h o l a r.g o o g l e .c o m ) , P u b l o n s ( h t t p : / / p u b l o n s .c o m ) , R e s e a r c h G a t e (https://www.researchgate.net), and Scopus (https://www.scopus.com/search/form.uri?display= basic#author), were selected for the study based on credibility and/or popularity among researchers.Comprehensive authors search on the four selected search engines was conducted for all academic staff in English Language.In other to ensure data validity, reliability, and uniformity, separate individuals (STB, ALO, AAB, and MJT) conducted the search for each search engine.The entries were verified by an independent fellow (MB) using random sampling and disparities resolved by joint-search (MB with STB, ALO, AAB, or MJT).The author names were entered in multiple formats and each format was searched at least three times to avoid omission of valid entries.Search outputs were filtered to remove duplications, authors with multiple outputs were merged and wrong publication entries were removed th for all authors.All searches ended on 25 December 2020.
The global impacts of the staff publications were assessed using selected indices presented in Table 1.In addition, staff online visibility (defined as the proportion of staff with a profile on selected platforms irrespective of other indices), and publication online visibility (defined as the proportion of individual publications that is indexed in selected platforms) were determined as given below: The data obtained were analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 21 (IBM Corporation, New York, United States).Data were summarised using descriptive statistics (mean, median, percentage, and number) and presented in tables and figures.Mean and median were compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Kruskal-Wallis test, respectively while proportions were compared using Chi-square.Significance difference was inferred at p<0.05.

Global impacts of scientific publications by the academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID
The publication online visibility of the staff presented in Figure 4 indicated that the publications were most visible (p<0.05) on Google Scholar (78.4±24.5%)and ResearchGate (65.9±19.4%).In addition, the majority of the staff had publication online visibility above 50%-midline on Google Scholar and ResearchGate while majority were below the midline on Publons and Scopus.Table 3 presents the summary of the global impacts of scientific publications.individuals and organizations.In this article, we report the global impacts of scientific publications by the academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID with the primary goal of sensitizing the staff on the need for research and publication excellence.
The University of Maiduguri is a second-generation university in Nigeria and the largest in Northeast Nigeria.CMS-UNIMAID, a unit of the university, was established for the training of health professionals, conduct of health research, and provision of community service.Thus, the academic staff of the institution is expected to author scientific publications that will promote their online visibility and enhance global research impacts.On contrary, the online visibility of the academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID is generally low with only five staff present on the four selected platforms and onequarter not on any of the platforms.However, the good visibility displayed on Scopus (63.9%), especially by the staff of FCS (82.4%) and FBCS (70.6%) may be attributed to spontaneous indexing once a paper is published in a recognized journal.In contrast, the extremely low visibility of the staff on Google Scholar and Publons could be attributed to the registration required of individuals on these platforms.Hence, we opined that the staff may not be aware of the platforms, or they do not appreciate how the platforms could promote their research activities.Whichever way, this finding raises concern about the research and publication culture of the staff and their knowledge, attitude, and perception of online scientific platforms.Our present finding agrees with the low academic research productivity of the academic staff of CMS- Previous study has reported underfunding of health research, poor remuneration, lack of interest, poor research culture, limited number of high-impact journals in Nigeria and lack of awareness as some of the contributing factors to poor research 30 productivity in Nigeria.Thus, some of these factors could have contributed to the poor staff and publication online visibility observed in the present study.In addition, we observed that male academic staff and staff in senior academic ranks are more visible online.Other studies have also associated 31,32 33 male gender and higher academic ranks to research productivity.This could be attributed to several factors such as year of experience, available time for research, domestic responsibility, and lack 31,32,34 of research mentorship.
In other to assess the global impacts of scientific publications of the staff, we determined the publication online visibility and evaluated their bibliometric indices on Google Scholar, Publons, ResearchGate, and Scopus.Generally, the publication online visibility remarkably varied across the platforms.It was excellent for Google Scholar, good for ResearchGate, and poor for Publons and Scopus.However, publication visibility on Google Scholar and ResearchGate may be misleading since the platforms are often criticized for their lenient policies that recognize 35,36 predatory and poor-quality journals.In contrast, Publons and Scopus are highly rated research 37 databases that recognize only credible journals thereby providing a standard benchmark for assessing research visibility.Unfortunately, only one-quarter (1235) of the 4940 publications by the staff are indexed on these platforms negating the global impact.This finding supports a previous report that publishing in predatory journals partly accounts for Nigeria's low contribution to

Original Article et al Mohammed Bukar
Thus, these could have contributed to the higher hindex from these countries.It is noteworthy to state that this observation may limit the wide application of h-index, especially when comparing researchers from diverse socioeconomic settings.Other drawbacks to h-index have been previously 40 reported.Despite that h-index has been associated 41,42 with academic rank and research experience, it is worrying to observe a low h-index in an academic unit with good numbers of senior staff (> 50%) and an average experience of about 20 years.This calls for inquiry into the research activities of the senior staff and raises concern over the mentorship being 23,24 received by the junior ones.Ezeanolue et al. have identified several gaps in developing health research capacity and challenges of training mid-level researchers in Nigeria.In our view, lack of research grants, inadequate foreign exposure, and poor research orientation could have significantly contributed to the poor global impacts of the scientific publications by the staff of CMS-UNIMAID.The poor impact observed in the present study reflects a previous report of low academic research productivity of academic staff of the 28 college.Notwithstanding the generally poor impact, it is noteworthy to acknowledge a few academic staff of the college with outstanding research impact comparable to other researchers in developed countries.This fit buttresses the fact that with adequate funding, appropriate research zeal, and a conducive research environment, the staff of the college could exert a significant impact on the global research community.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The staff online visibility of the academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID was satisfactory on Scopus but very poor on Publons.Male staff, senior academic staff, and staff of the FBCS and FCS are more likely to be visible online than their counterparts.The publication online visibility and selected bibliometric indices of majority of the staff were poor on Scopus and Publons indicating poor global research impacts.The present study identified a huge gap in the research activities of the staff which requires urgent interventions.Thus, sensitization of the staff on quality research, publishing in highimpact journals, research mentorship, and research "grantsmanship" may provide short-to mediumterm remedies.The long-term measures may include increased research funding by governments, improve infrastructure, provision of state-of-the-art equipment, and expanded opportunities for oversea training.

3 , 4 coordinated
scientific research.This underscores the huge investment in research to ensure sustainable human and capital development.In 2018, the United States, China, and Japan had the three highest research and development expenditures of $581.6 billion, $554.3 billion, and 5 $171.3 billion, respectively.Comparatively, North America and Western Europe accounted for 46.1% of research and development expenditure in 2016 as 6 against 0.8% for sub-Saharan Africa.The impact of scientific research partly depends on the quality of the research (among other factors) which is influenced to an extent by the availability of research 7 funds.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Staff online visibility of academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID on selected platforms

Figure 2 :Figure 3 :Figure 4 :
Figure 2: Sex-distribution of staff online visibility of academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID

38 recognized
global research resources.Therefore, concerted efforts are required by policymakers, researchers, sponsors, and sundry to change the ugly narrative.Furthermore, all other indices (h-index, i10-index, RG Score, citations, citation/item, research interest, and number of documents) evaluated revealed poor global impacts of scientific publications by most of the academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID.h-index remains the most popular and widely used index for 10,11 research impact assessment.The mean Scopus hindex (4.0) of the staff in the present study was 19 similar to 4.09 reported from Turkey but two-fold lower than that of medical researchers from 11 Canada and two-to three-fold lower than that of the 39 United States.Canada and United States are developed nations having affluent research environments with extensive research training, funding opportunities, and high-impact journals.
Table2presents the description of the 202 academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID whose global impacts of their scientific publications were assessed.The mean age and year of experience of the 202 academic staff were 45.4±9.2 years and 13.9±9.6years, respectively.They were disproportionately distributed across five faculties and 25 active departments in the college.Significant proportions of these academic staff were from Faculty of

Table 2 :
Description of the academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID whose scientific publications were assessed *Inter-faculty comparison FAHS -Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, FBCS -Faculty of Basic Clinical Sciences, FBMS -Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences, FCS -Faculty of Clinical Sciences, FD -Faculty of Dentistry, SD -Standard deviation

Table 3 :
Global impacts of scientific publications by academic staff of CMS-UNIMAID Values are means ± standard deviation FAHS -Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, FBCS -Faculty of Basic Clinical Sciences, FBMS -Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences, FCS -Faculty of Clinical Sciences, FD -Faculty of Dentistry