DevPubMetric

The DevPubMetric system provides quantitative analysis of research publications resulting from development research programmes. The current system and methodology were adapted from a monitoring and evaluation system that was part of the ESPA programme that ran from 2009-2018. The DevPubMetric system was developed during 2020 to update the statistics derived from the ESPA programme to mark the 10th anniversary of the programme’s establishment. A summary of ESPA’ achievements after a decade of activity is available on this site.

The system is now being applied to a range of other applications providing regular updates on academic publications and their impact for other development research programmes and for a number of research institutions and partnerships.

Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

GCRF was established in 2016 as a £1.5 billion fund from the UK Government that supports cutting-edge research to address challenges faced by developing countries. To date, the DevPubMetric system has captured information from over 4,000 academic publications listed in the Scopus system. There are additional publications recorded by projects through the UKRI Gateway to Research system which are not currently found in Scopus.


Total GCRF publications by year and the proportion of those which were published in open access format.

Cumulative total of number of publications and citations for GCRF publications

Additional information on GCRF publications in the DevPubMetric system include:

Newton Fund

The Newton Fund was established in 2015 to build research and innovation partnerships with countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to support economic development and social welfare, tackle global challenges and develop talent and careers . To date, the DevPubMetric system has captured information from over 5,000 academic publications listed in the Scopus system. There are additional publications recorded by projects through the UKRI Gateway to Research system which are not currently found in Scopus.


Total Newton Fund publications by year and the proportion of those which were published in open access format.

Cumulative total of number of publications and citations for the Newton Fund publications

Additional information on Newton Fund publications in the DevPubMetric system include:

Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA)

The ESPA programme ran from 2009 through to 2018. The DevPubMetric system has been used to capture information describing academic publications over that period and the level of participation by researchers from developing countries in those publications.


Total ESPA programme publications by year and the proportion of those which were published in open access format.

Cumulative total of number of publications and citations for the ESPA programme’s publications

Additional information on ESPA publications in the DevPubMetric system include:

Comparison of Programmes. ESPA, GCRF and Newton

One application of the DevPubMetric system has been to compare the performance and delivery of the ESPA programme, GCRF and the Newton Fund. This work collated data collected by DevPubMetric including the number of publications, citation rates and the level of engagement with developing country authors. This initial analysis highlights the high levels of academic outputs from all three programmes, but suggests that more work is required to include developing country researchers in these publications. For example, in 2020, over 42 % of ESPA and GCRF publications did not have any developing country authors. The Newton Fund performed better with 26 % of publications only have authors from high-income countries. When considering individual authors, publications from all three programmes have more authors from high-income countries than developing countries, rising from 58 % in the Newton Fund to 69 % in GCRF.

The University of Leicester

Data describing recent publications at the University of Leicester have been collated using DevPubMetric. These include:

Nairobi Alliance

The Nairobi Alliance emerged from a meeting hosted by the University of Leicester and University of Nairobi in 2017 supported through the University of Leicester’s funding for global challenge research supported by Research England.

The Nairobi Alliance members are:

  • The University of Leicester (United Kingdom)
  • The University of Malawi
  • The University of Nairobi (Kenya)
  • The University of Rwanda
  • The University of Witwatersrand (South Africa)

The Alliance has agreed to enhance joint research addressing shared global challenges. DevPubMetric is being used to track patterns of joint research publication and has captured details of all joint publications since the first recorded by Scopus in 1977. Since that time over 600 publications have involved two or more members of the Alliance.

Data currently available include:

Universities in Iraqi Kurdistan

Data are being collected to capture information about academic publications produced by all research-active universities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.