Abstract Several studies have highlighted the persistent lack of impact that African researchers have in international science. To examine this in the geosciences, we reviewed the representation and contribution of African authors using a bibliometric study of international high-impact geoscience journals. Detailed metadata from all articles (n = 182,996) published in these journals (n = 21), and from two Africa-based journals, were extracted from the Web of Science™. We then assembled information related to the research to track how frequently African authors and studies appear, relative to their international peers. The results show that, on average, 3573 high-impact geoscience articles are published each year, and 3.9% of these articles are on an African topic. Only 30% of these African articles contain an African author. In terms of authorship, the continent of Africa has produced 2.3% of the geoscience literature surveyed, which is comparable to the Netherlands (2.2%), a country 70 times smaller than Africa by population. Geoscience output from Africa over time shows concerning trends, in that it persistently lags behind global output, especially in comparison with high-income countries. For example, the five years of most prolific output from Africa occurred more than 25 years ago (1978, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1990). In terms of academic impact, the 25 most highly cited geoscience articles for each of the journals surveyed were found to be written by 2744 authors, of which only 13 are African. There is also an intra-Africa imbalance in authorship, given that more than 80% of African authorships stem from only five countries (South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Ethiopia, Algeria, and Cameroon). Lastly, we show that most countries produce 60–80% of their own geoscience articles (i.e., by in-country authors), while this number for Africa is 30%. This is clear evidence of ‘parachute’ geoscience in Africa, a practise that marginalises the prospects of in-country researchers. Such practises may have also developed because the next generation of researchers in Africa is not developing, a problem caused by the lowest tertiary education enrolment rate in the world, and the well-documented ‘brain-drain’ of scientists from the continent. There is also a strong parallelism between research expenditure per capita and research output globally: high-income countries, which produce most of the geoscience research, spent US$1064 per capita on research in 2017, while Africa spent only US$42. Such low expenditure results not only from difficulties in raising research funds, but also from weak institutional support for African researchers, except in South Africa. For those researchers who are productive, they are reluctant to submit work to high-impact journals, for fear of rejection, and many do not become involved in international collaborations because of high teaching loads and lack of incentive. Indeed, there is even a distinct lack of intra-Africa collaboration—only 6 countries collaborate internally, mostly with South Africa. However, there are positive international collaborations being developed in the earth and environmental sciences in Africa, such as the UNESCO-supported online training program (GEOLOOC), the West African Exploration Initiative, the Africa Array program, and other programs initiated by the British Geological Survey in East Africa.

中文翻译：

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走出非洲：非洲作者在高影响地球科学文献中的代表性不足

摘要 几项研究强调了非洲研究人员在国际科学中持续缺乏影响力。为了在地球科学中研究这一点，我们使用国际高影响力地球科学期刊的文献计量研究来审查非洲作者的代表性和贡献。从 Web of Science™ 中提取了在这些期刊 (n = 21) 上发表的所有文章 (n = 182,996) 和两份非洲期刊的详细元数据。然后，我们收集了与研究相关的信息，以追踪非洲作者和研究相对于其国际同行出现的频率。结果表明，平均每年发表 3573 篇高影响力的地球科学文章，其中 3.9% 的文章是关于非洲主题的。这些非洲文章中只有 30% 包含非洲作者。在作者身份方面，非洲大陆产生了 2.3% 的被调查地球科学文献，与荷兰 (2.2%) 相当，荷兰的人口比非洲小 70 倍。随着时间的推移，非洲的地球科学产出显示出令人担忧的趋势，因为它一直落后于全球产出，尤其是与高收入国家相比。例如，非洲产量最高的五年发生在 25 年前（1978、1979、1982、1983、1990）。在学术影响方面，被调查的每个期刊中引用率最高的 25 篇地球科学文章是由 2744 位作者撰写的，其中只有 13 位是非洲人。由于 80% 以上的非洲作者仅来自五个国家（南非、埃及、摩洛哥、埃塞俄比亚、阿尔及利亚和喀麦隆），因此非洲内部的作者数量也存在不平衡。最后，我们表明大多数国家产生了 60-80% 的地球科学文章（即由国内作者撰写），而非洲的这一数字为 30%。这是非洲“降落伞”地球科学的明确证据，这种做法使国内研究人员的前景边缘化。这种做法的发展也可能是因为非洲的下一代研究人员没有发展起来，这是由世界上最低的高等教育入学率以及有据可查的非洲大陆科学家“人才流失”引起的问题。全球人均研究支出与研究产出之间也存在很强的相似性：产生大部分地球科学研究的高收入国家 2017 年人均研究支出为 1064 美元，而非洲仅支出 42 美元。如此低的支出不仅是因为难以筹集研究资金，而且是因为除南非外，对非洲研究人员的机构支持薄弱。对于那些富有成效的研究人员来说，他们不愿意将工作提交给高影响力的期刊，因为害怕被拒绝，而且许多人因为教学负担大和缺乏动力而没有参与国际合作。事实上，非洲内部甚至明显缺乏合作——只有 6 个国家在内部合作，主要是与南非合作。然而，在非洲地球和环境科学领域正在开展积极的国际合作，例如教科文组织支持的在线培训计划（GEOLOOC）、西非探索倡议、非洲阵列计划、