A Bibliometric Analysis of Childhood Malnutrition Research Productivity in Africa over a Twenty-Year Period (1999-2019)

Background: Africa remains the epicenter of the global burden of malnutrition and the only region the number of stunted children is on the rise. A major cause of morbidity and mortality amongst children, it has been associated with factors such as poverty, food insecurity, maternal education and socio-economic inequalities. The role of research publication has been noted in providing an important connection between knowledge creation and translation of evidence to practice. Therefore, to determine the trend and the efforts put in place to eliminate malnutrition in the African region, bibliometric analysis was used to cumulatively present research productivity. The aim of this study was to assess childhood malnutrition research productivity in Africa, quantifying gaps, the most significant factors associated with the citations and future bibliometrics study path. Methods: A search of the PubMed database was conducted in December 2020 in order to obtain the childhood malnutrition research volume of each African country over a twenty-year period. The search was conducted and metadata of publications and articles gathered from the PubMed database using the PubMedR package. A comparative weighting for population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was done by calculating the ratio of the number of articles from each country to their respective populations and GDP. Poisson regression models were used to examine the publication productivity time trends over the twenty-year period. The association between research productivity, population size and GDP were examined using the Pearson correlation analysis. Results: A total of 11,758 articles on childhood malnutrition indexed on PubMed were returned and described in this study. Six countries—South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Malawi account for about half of total publications. However, when controlled for population and GDP, much smaller countries Cape Verde, Swaziland, Gambia were most productive. Africa’s relative share of the world’s total childhood malnutrition publication rose from 6.2% in 1999 to a record high of 12.3% in 2019. Across the top 10 most productive countries by volume of research publication, there was a statistically significant average annual percent change. There was a strong positive and statistically significant correlation between total publications on childhood malnutrition and countries’ population (r= 0.65, P < 0.01). We also observed a strong positive and statistically significant correlation between total publications on childhood malnutrition and countries’ GDP (r = 0.60, P < 0.01). Conclusion: Africa’s percentage share of the world’s childhood malnutrition research output has experienced a steady improvement. There remains an under-representation of the continent in research productivity. Populous countries with relatively higher GDP had the most indexed articles, and much smaller countries were more efficient in terms of research productivity relative to population size and GDP.