Egypt ranked first in Africa in the field of scientific publishing for 2020, according to SciVal. SciVal is an analytical tool that provides research data of 19,600 research institutions and 231 nations. Egypt's Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel Ghaffar received, on Saturday, a report by Netherlands-based publishing company Elsevier which specialises in scientific, technical, and medical content. The report focused on the countries that contributed the most scientific publishing between 2016 and 2021 using the SciVal system for analyzing research performance. The report stated that in 2020, Egypt published 31,647 research papers, while the number of publications in South Africa reached 30,970 papers, making Egypt ranked first in Africa. The report showed Egypt's progress in quantitative terms over the past five years, while maintaining the quality of scientific publication above the global average by 27%. The report added that these indicators depend on the scientific output of research, which depends on the number of research published by a specific institution or university, the number of total citations issued, the percentage of citations relative to the global average in a specific field or specialization, and the type of research. The report pointed out that these indicators represent the starting point for further discussion on how the Ministry of Higher Education contributes to universities and research institutions in strengthening its research strategy and maintaining high-level positions in the region.
