2021-11-09

Chantal BIYA International Reference Center for Research on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Management (CIRCB), Yaoundé, Cameroon.; Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy.; Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tohoku, Sendai, Japan.; UFR IM2AG, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France.; Graduate School of Life Sciences, University of Tohoku, Sendai, Japan.; Laboratory for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (LIAM), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.; Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.; Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Background: More than 1 year after the beginning of the international spread of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), the reasons explaining its apparently lower reported burden in Africa are still to be fully elucidated. Few studies previously investigated the potential reasons explaining this epidemiological observation using data at the level of a few African countries. However, an updated analysis considering the various epidemiological waves and variables across an array of categories, with a focus on African countries might help to better understand the COVID-19 pandemic on the continent. Thus, we investigated the potential reasons for the persistently lower transmission and mortality rates of COVID-19 in Africa. Methods: Data were collected from publicly available and well-known online sources. The cumulative numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths per 1 million population reported by the African countries up to February 2021 were used to estimate the transmission and mortality rates of

2021-07-28

UFR IM2AG, Université Grenoble Alpes, 38000 Grenoble, France.; Laboratory for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (LIAM), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada.; Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tohoku, Sendai 980-8575, Japan.; Chantal BIYA International Reference Centre for Research on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Management (CIRCB), Yaoundé 3077, Cameroon.; Graduate School of Life Sciences, University of Tohoku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan.; Canadian Centre for Disease Modelling (CCDM), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada.

Scientometrics enables scholars to assess and visualize emerging research trends and hot-spots in the scientific literature from a quantitative standpoint. In the last decades, Africa has nearly doubled its absolute count of scholarly output, even though its share in global knowledge production has dramatically decreased. The still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the way scholarly research is conducted, published, and disseminated. However, the COVID-19-related research focus, the scientific productivity, and the research collaborative network of African researchers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic remain to be elucidated. This study aimed to clarify the COVID-19 research patterns among African researchers and estimate the strength of collaborations and partnerships between African researchers and scholars from the rest of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, collecting data from electronic scholarly databases such as Web of Science (WoS), PubMed/MEDLINE and