Research Productivity, Visibility, and Impact at the University of Namibia: Building a Framework for Open Access and Research Data Management

Background

Research impact “is the degree to which research findings are seen, noticed, read, used, built upon, cited and applied by other scholars” (Bashorun, 2015, p.53). Most authors of scholarly content desire their papers to be widely disseminated, read, cited and built upon to increase scientific knowledge and research impact (Chan, 2004). In that regard, research performance and output remain a key ingredient in most African universities as they strive to achieve the delicate balancing act of preserving national indigenous repute and world-wide visibility. For decades, African universities are said not to feature well in the global university rankings due to among other reason, low research output (Andoh, 2017). In most African Universities, given the pressures of government policies of massification of higher education, research and innovation has fallen short and remained minimal, with teaching more pronounced (Andoh, 2017). Retracting the “lost mission of research” in Africa, Andoh (2017, p.20). validly observes that “the first universities in Africa were established with the mission of teaching, research and community engagement, but between the early 1970s and 2000, teaching became the only de facto mission of many of these African universities”. He argues that most of the post-independence period witnessed a lot government and nationalistic interference in the running of universities. Andoh (2017, p.21) draws evidence to depict the low research output during that time. He says: