An assessment of the impact and visibility of South African journals

The assessment of scientific journals is of particular interest to South Africa's higher education institutions as their research is partly funded according to the number of publications of their members of staff. This article has two objectives. The first one is to identify the effects of the government's withdrawal of financial support on these journals' impact factors. The second objective is to provide an assessment of the visibility of the South African journals indexed in the Journal Citation Report (JCR) of the 2002. The findings indicate that the termination of the government interference in the affairs of the journals had on average a beneficial effect on the impact factors of the journals. South Africa is found to have a good representation in the JCR, similar or better to that of the scientifically small countries in Europe, and represents approximately 90% of the African continent journals in the JCR. ne visible scientific disciplines are identified and the journals are assessed according to their impact factors, to the impact factors of journals citing them, and the self-citing and self-cited rates.