摘要
The scientific publications of the 15 West African countries published from 2011 to 2020 were analysed.The co-authorship,the total publications per year,the collaboration rate,the relative specialisation index,and the intraregional production were analysed.It comes out that the region produces more than one hundred thousand papers in ten years,which means more than ten thousand per year,tripling its performance as compared with the previous decade.The number of co-authors per paper increases and rises from 4.6 to 6.4.The international collaboration rate is 58%,suggesting that the region's publishing activity depends more on abroad,even though differences were registered at individual country level:some countries multiply by more than 10 their production as compared to the previous decade.The intraregional collaboration is still low(around 5%),meaning that the region's countries do not collaborate with each other and prefer abroad.As far as fields of science are concerned,it appears that the domestic papers perform better in Humanities and Social sciences,whereas the internationally co-authored papers perform better in Natural sciences and Engineering and technology and lesser in Agricultural sciences and Medical and health sciences.
