Information Management as a Nexus to Promote the use of Indigenous Medicine and Enhance Public Healthcare Delivery: A Bibliometric Analysis

Authors

Patrick Ajibade (PhD), Information Studies Programme, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South AfricaFollow
Stephen M. Mutula Prof., Information Studies Programme, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South AfricaFollow

Date of this Version

Winter 2018

Comments

MS #5457

Abstract

This paper uses a bibliometric analysis to explore the citations trend in ethnomedicine and information management. A text mining algorithm of a total number of 8, 333 publications (n = 8,333) was conducted based on the title, abstract and keywords to find co-occurrence of key terms in indigenous medicine and information management. The first objective was to analyze the authorship, outputs and citation trends and establish if researchers have been able to establish a nexus between indigenous herbal use and the role of information management in promoting such use. Secondly, the study sought to establish if there is already a link in information management research through collaboration as a nexus to promote indigenous use of herbal medicine and enhance public healthcare delivery systems on the African continent. A computation synthesis of the data was performed using R programming statistical analysis and bibliometric software to visualize the analyzed data. Based on the R programming output, the total author sample size was 35,970 (n = 35,970), and their total publications output was n= 8,333, while the total outputs parameters was as follows: Min = 5.00 Max = 71.00, µ = 10.59. The average citation per items was 4.74 (ACP = 4.74) h-index=60, sum of times cited (STC = 39,572), citing articles (CA = 32,749) without self-citations (n =36,042) and citing articles (CA= 30,777). The findings suggest that researchers have yet to establish the nexus between information management and its impact in promoting indigenous use of natural remedies within public healthcare to promote its efficacy.