Open Research Data in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Bibliometric Study Using the Data Citation Index

The purpose of the study was to explore the status of research data sharing among researchers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and internationally. Relevant data was extracted from the Data Citation Index (DCI) using an advanced search strategy, which was limited to the publication years between 2009 and 2014. Data was analysed to obtain the number of data records by country, institution, subject category, year of publication, and document type as well as the number of citations.