Global and Local Research Excellence in Africa: New Perspectives on Performance Assessment and Funding

The concept ‘research excellence’ remains ill-defined in performance assessment and science funding frameworks. This article introduces a framework that distinguishes ‘global excellence’ and ‘local excellence’, which enable a better understanding of ‘research excellence’ in African science. Where global excellence is primarily determined by acknowledged visibility and partially measurable reputation within the (inter)national scholarly community, its local counterpart relates to utilisation of knowledge and know-how among non-scholarly users and communities. Our empirical study of global excellence, based on a citation impact analysis of ‘basic research’ publications during the past 15 years, with one or more African-based authors, shows a large degree of dependence on and cooperation with non-African international partners. More detailed analysis of research-active universities in the African Research Universities Alliance also highlights their large dependency on international resources and funding in their highly cited ‘globally excellent’ research. Our analysis of local excellence focusses on the research objectives of the centres of excellence at universities in sub-Saharan Africa, showing a mix of local and global components. The notion of local excellence is in need of appropriate definitions and further operationalisation. The distinction between global and local excellence, within science funding and research assessment frameworks, offers a more comprehensive view and better understanding of high-end research performance of universities in Africa. Developing quality criteria and performance indicators of local excellence may incentivise researchers to contribute to socio-economic development and innovation.


Background
• Recognition that higher edu.sector crucial for socio-economic development

• Expectations of universities:
−deliver skilled graduates for employment in local/regional markets (education) −address local/regional needs (community engagement, application-oriented research) • Challenges:

Research design and questions
Two main research questions: • How can one define and operationalise both types of excellence while taking into account their interrelationship and general characteristics of science in Africa?
• What are the possible implications of implementing such a distinction for science funding and evidence-informed research performance assessment frameworks in Africa?

Methodology and information sources
Capturing global excellence -big data analytics of knowledge production: • Essential to determine how much of science done in Africa is connected to/dependent on scholarly community of

Global North
• Quantitative bibliometric approach -info from hundreds of thousands of research publications • Looked at all research publications with at least one author address in Africa

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Resource constraints and underdeveloped framework conditions −Difficult to combine providing mass education with gaining international scientific reputation • Pathways to stimulate growth in scientific disciplines: −Research cooperations with Global North −Emulating Global North science policies and incentives to improve research performance Background Meanwhile….Interest in the concept of "excellence" in Africa -establishment 2015 of Africa Research Excellence Fund -vision that connects local dimension of conducting scientific research to global impact • …but also critical voices: 'Excellence: what is it good for?' -tensions between performance standards from Global North and limited capacity within Africa's science systems and universities to meet them.• Performance measure of world university rankings gives rise to Centres of Excellence in sub-saharan Africa Research design and questions Two concepts of research excellence: • Global research excellence usually viewed as, e.g., international prestige, knowledge creation, citations, awards, and large research grants • Local excellence -applied segment of science addressing local issues Concepts interconnected, but advantages in looking at them as different concepts for developing fit-for-purpose quality criteria + performance indicators in African unis and CoEs

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Used citation-based metrics as a performance indicator (e.g.top 10% most highly cited) Capturing local excellence -case studies of Centres of Excellence: • Following examples from Global North, CoEs have sprung up in last 15 years in Africa as physical/virtual networks • CoEs aim to enhance public value of science through capacity building, education, and local development • Little empirical information, underdeveloped quality criteria and performance indicators for local excellence • Authors look at case studies of how CoEs conceptionalize + operationalize notions of local and global excellence Empirical findings • Four categories of "African science" − in cooperation with partners in Africa, share in top 10% most-cited pubs declined to 3% − cooperations with partners outside Africa: 10% share  Int'l cooperations play key role in research that gets highly cited. Global excellence more likely to emerge from engaging with partners outside Africa Empirical findings • Assessed int'l dimension of research in top 1% most cited papers worldwide: − Location of co-authoring research partners − Orgin of citations − Institutional funding sources  Highly cited research produced by ARUA (CoE) African universities seems critically dependent on non-African collaborative partners