Kemri ranked the third best research agency in Africa
Laboratory technologists working on HIV sample tests at Kenya Medical Research Institute on April 7, 2020.
What you need to know:
- Kemri ranked third on the continent out of 352 institutions.
- South African Medical Research Council topped the list while Mozambique’s Centro de Investigacao em Saude da Manhica came in second.
The Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) has been named the third best health research institution in Africa in terms of health research output; and the best in Kenya by the authoritative global information analytics giant, Scimago Lab.
According to the just released 2023 rankings by Scamigo in conjunction with Elsevier, a technologically based company offering innovative solutions to improve scientific visibility and online reputation, Kemri ranked third on the continent out of 352 institutions.
South African Medical Research Council topped the list while Mozambique’s Centro de Investigacao em Saude da Manhica came in second.
Reacting to the announcement, the Kenya Medical Research Institute Director-General Elijah Songok expressed his gratitude to the Kemri fraternity.
“First, I want to thank the Board of Directors for providing the institute with leadership; and second the members of staff for working tirelessly in ensuring the dissemination of health research is done effectively. As an institute, we are keen on further improving human health research through innovation not only in the country but also globally.”
Scamigo Lab operates Scimago Institutions Rankings (SIR), a classification of academic and research related institutions ranked by a composite indicator that combines different sets of indicators based on research performance, innovation outputs and societal impact.
The ranking is divided into five sectors: government, health, higher education, private and others. For each, it measures areas such as research output, international collaboration, normalised impact and publication rate.
Kemri has continued to perform well in the SIR classifications for the past four years.
In 2019, Kemri was ranked the top research institution both in the country and in Africa.
According to Scamigo,SIR reviews every dimension of the scholarly communication carried out at an organisation, providing valuable information about research performance, efficiency and effectiveness of the institution’s research policies and programmes. In addition, the SIR provides a friendly interface that allows the visualisation of any customised ranking from the combination of sets of indicators and compares the trends before arriving at a conclusion.
“The SIR includes both size-dependent and size independent indicators; that is indicators influenced and not influenced by the size of the institutions. In this manner, the SIR provides overall statistics of the scientific publication and other output of institutions, which enables comparisons between institutions of different sizes.
Some of the score indicators are Research Factor, Normalized Impact, Excellence with Leadership Output, Scientific Leadership, High Quality Publications and International Collaboration. Others are Knowledge Patents, Technological Impact and Societal Factor.
