KEMRI RANKED TOP IN AFRICA

The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) is ranked the top health research institution in Africa in terms of health research output, according to the authoritative global information analytics giant, Scimago Lab.

The Institute out performed its contemporaries, the Medical Research Council (MRC) of South Africa, University College Hospital of Ibadan, Nigeria and the National Medical Research Institute (NIMRI) of Tanzania in the just released 2019 rankings by Scimago Lab carried out in conjunction with Elsevier, technologically-based company offering innovative solutions to improve the Scientific Visibility and Online Reputation.

On receiving the news, Director General, KEMRI, Prof. Yeri Kombe said that the KEMRI Board of Management and the staff were humbled at the same time privileged to have received this encouraging revelation. He congratulated all the staff, the management team and the Board for this outstanding performance. “We at KEMRI are truly humbled and privileged to be ranked as one of the top institution in the World.This is living our vision of being the Leading Center of Excellence in Research for Human Health,” said Prof Kombe.

In the report available on the firms’ website www.scimagoir.com MRC is placed, a distant fourth, after NIMRI in third position, and College Hospital of Ibadan is 10. A total of 6,454 Institutions are ranked globally among them the Harvard University, National Institute of Health, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Stanford University from the US.

Overall in all sectors in Africa, the Institute still registers an impressive showing by being ranked position seven, a head of MRC (9), NIMRI (8) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) 11. Globally, KEMRI is ranked 89 out of 1,252 institutions in health research output worldwide.

Scimago Lab works closely with international partners from the publishing realm, scientific information suppliers, universities and government agencies. Scimago Lab and Elsevier developed a cutting-edge analysis tools, and evaluation concepts which analyses institution research performance across the world based on comprehensive and authoritative data including high-level disambiguation procedures. It operates what is known as the 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.

SIR reviews every dimension of the scholarly communication carried out at an organization providing valuable information about research performance, efficiency and effectiveness of the institution’s research policies and programs. In addition, the SIR provides a friendly interface that allows the visualization of any customized 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, at the same time that enables comparisons between institutions of different sizes.

Some of the score Indicators include Research Factor, Normalized Impact, Excellence with Leadership Output, Scientific Leadership, High Quality Publications, International Collaboration among others. Others are Knowledge Patents, Technological Impact, Societal Factor etc.