Research productivity and scientific impact of gender-based violence in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a common occurrence and contributes to human rightsabuses of both men and women globally. It, therefore, requires investigation from differentperspectives to shed light on its depth and breadth. While research in the domain isincreasing, the status, nature, and extent of this research are not readily known, particularly inSub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been identified as the region worst hit by this atrocity.This study appraises research publications on GBV in SSA from 1996 to 2020 with a view todetermining the performance of researchers, institutions, and countries in terms of GBVresearch productivity and scientific impact in the domain. This is primarily a quantitative studythat applies content analysis through bibliometric means to analyze GBV publicationsindexed in the Scopus database from 1996 to 2020. Using the publication count technique, thestudy focuses largely on the journal of the research by author, institutional, and source aswell as a citation analysis to determine citation counts and research impact. The data wereprocessed and analyzed with Microsoft Excel, and VOSviewer.  Findings reveal a growingresearch pattern in the domain, with higher research performance in terms of usage andvisibility coming from the leading research countries and institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa.The same countries and institutions produce higher citations and research impact. While therehave been concerns about growing GBV in developing countries, the productivity of thecountries to add to global gender-based research is equally minimal, suggesting lowinvestment in and priority of GBV research.