Involvement of the University of Rwanda in medical and surgical research: a bibliometric analysis of achievements and gaps

Abstract

Abstract Background In the past few decades, global health research has grown incredibly quickly. The interest of scientists and medical professionals in evidence-based medicine (EBM), new drug and vaccine discovery are among the main reasons for the rapid increase of the scholarly literature in health research. The aim of this study is to analyse the scholarly literature published by researchers affiliated with the University of Rwanda (UR) and discover the achievements and gaps in medical and surgical research in UR.Methods The University of Rwanda was searched in Lens Scholarly Works, and all articles connected to the university were discovered. We filtered the initial results by field of study to locate materials that were published in medical and surgical fields. Except for co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence analysis which were done using VOSviewer software, all bibliometric analyses were carried out using Lens database.Results For the initial search, University of Rwanda was associated with 2,821 articles. After careful assessment of publications based on their field of study, a total of 1, 220 and 106 publications were found to be in the medical and surgical fields respectively. The analysis was based on the category of scholarly work, the chemicals of focus of the study, the authors, the funders, and the journal that published the study. Journal articles constitute a sizable fraction of these publications, whereas conference articles, book chapters, reprints, and reports make up a far smaller portion. By comparing the numbers of publications, authors, and funding in the surgical and medical field, many gaps are apparent in surgical than medical research field.Conclusion Although there is an increase in number of publications in the University of Rwanda, the number of medical and surgical literature in UR is still low. Improving mentorship to students and involving them in ongoing research projects; not restricting them to only data collection but allow them to participate in peer-reviewed publications are key measures to increase number of medical and surgical scholarly publications in University of Rwanda.