Research collaboration among academics in selected Universities in Nigeria and South Africa

Abstract

Abstract
This paper investigated the nature, patterns and trends of research collabor ation among academics in six universities in Nigeria and South Africa between 2003 and 2013. The paper determined the level and extent of knowledge sharing among the actors by exploring: research collaboration within, between and beyond the six universitie s; the universities’ contribution in terms of the number of co - authored papers; comparison of academics/researchers’ level of research collaboration at the universities in the two countries; each country and universities degree of collaboration during the research period; trends of research collaboration from 2003 – 2013; influence of research collaboration on research impact; and the relationship between research collaboration and knowledge sharing. All academic staff at six universities whose publications appear in the SCOPUS database for the research period of 2003 – 2013 was the target population. Data was first extracted from SCOPUS using researchers’ affiliation search by university for the period of study. Only researchers who published one or more pa pers were extracted from the database. The researcher counted the country -wise co -authorships and considered the co -occurrence of Nigeria or South Africa with another country in the address field of each record. The study found that research collaboration does occur among academics/researchers in the universities, SA collaborated more, but country-wise, Nigeria had more domestic collaborations, there is a relationship between research collaboration and knowledge sharing as co -authored researches receives mo re citations than single authored.

Key Words: Nigeria, South Africa, Research, Collaboration , Academics, Bibliometrics, Co-authorship