Report on improvement of peer-reviewed publications

The CGIAR Performance Measurement is closely linked to the World Bank’s annual funding for ICRAF. In this year’s exercise, ICRAF was rated as “Superior.” As a result we were allocated $0.6 million in addition to the base allocation of $1.1 million. This has prompted ICRAF to take a critical look at areas where improvement is needed so as to achieve an “Outstanding” rating in the future, which translates into more funding.One area which stood out was the number of peer-reviewed publications per scientist. In the results, the centre which scored highest had 3.37 publications per scientist; the lowest score was 0.97, and the average was 2.13. ICRAF ranked as the 3rd Centre from the bottom with a score of 1.2 publications per scientist, signifying a drop from the previous year where we scored 1.8. We cannot pay too much attention to annual fluctuations because of the ‘lumpy’ timing of publications, but we need to be alert to factors that are affecting our general productivity in writing and publishing.Jan Laarman, Sheila Keino, Jacinta Kimwaki and Liz Kariuki form the administrative team which is looking into ways of assessing the quality and quantity of our publications output. From that assessment, we will be interacting with ICRAF’s scientists and senior leadership regarding a solid strategy to improve the significance (impact) and number of ICRAF’s peer-reviewed publications and related international public goods

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