Abstract

SOORYAMOORTHY, R. The visibility of engineering research in South Africa, 1975-2005. S. Afr. J. Ind. Eng. [online]. 2010, vol.21, n.2, pp.1-12. ISSN 2224-7890.

Engineering as a branch of science has a crucial role in the growth of the economy. The growth and development of engineering is therefore highly relevant. One way to understand this is to examine the characteristics of the scientific knowledge produced in the field of engineering. Drawing on the publications in engineering from the ISI Web of Science over the last three decades, this paper looks at the visibility and importance of engineering research in South Africa. The visibility of research publications is studied in terms of the number of citations a publication receives. The analysis shows that the visibility of South African engineering research is determined by the number of authors involved in the production of a paper, the presence of international collaboration, the degree of collaboration, and the journals in which the papers are published. Engineering research in South Africa, compared with that of all subjects, is clearly growing. But the visibility of South African engineering publications, in comparison with all other subjects, has been diminishing in recent years.

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