Who uses research funded from South Africa

Where the papers funded from South Africa are cited inside the 400 tracked journals: by country, by institution and by funder, and whose research the papers from South Africa cite. A citation link is one paper citing another, both in the tracked journals (from OpenAlex references). The source is the country of the cited paper's funders (OpenAlex funders and their countries); the users are the countries and institutions of the citing paper's authors. A link counts once for each funding country of the cited paper and each country (or institution) of the citing paper, so the rows overlap. Papers without funding information, about half of them, have no source. Also as Markdown.

← Research supply chain

Key findings#

Since 2023, papers in the tracked journals cited the 944 papers funded from South Africa 5,838 times (counting each citing country), #25 of 128 funding countries.
2% of the links come from papers with authors in South Africa; abroad, the largest users are China (2,736), the United States (714) and the United Kingdom (566).
The institutions citing this research most are Nankai University (113), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (110) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (106).
The South Africa funders behind the most-cited links are National Research Foundation (5,044), University of Johannesburg (220) and University of Pretoria (143).
In turn, papers with authors in South Africa draw most on research funded from China (1,401), the United States (708) and the United Kingdom (575).

Citing countries#

Countries whose papers cite South Africa-funded research, since 2023
#	Citing country	Links	Share
1	China	2,736	47%
2	United States	714	12%
3	United Kingdom	566	10%
4	South Korea	488	8%
5	Australia	369	6%
6	India	273	5%
7	Germany	253	4%
8	Hong Kong	249	4%
9	Italy	239	4%
10	France	220	4%
11	Spain	194	3%
12	Canada	181	3%
13	Singapore	180	3%
14	South Africa	139	2%
15	Turkey	128	2%
16	Netherlands	119	2%
17	Japan	117	2%
18	Vietnam	103	2%
19	Saudi Arabia	96	2%
20	United Arab Emirates	85	1%
21	Taiwan	83	1%
22	Malaysia	79	1%
23	Pakistan	77	1%
24	Iran	76	1%
25	Sweden	74	1%
26	Tunisia	72	1%
27	Portugal	71	1%
28	Finland	66	1%
29	Macao	65	1%
30	Switzerland	65	1%

Citing institutions#

Institutions whose papers cite South Africa-funded research most, since 2023
#	Institution	Country	Links
1	Nankai University	China	113
2	Hong Kong Polytechnic University	Hong Kong	110
3	Chinese Academy of Sciences	China	106
4	South China University of Technology	China	103
5	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore	87
6	University of Electronic Science and Technology of China	China	76
7	Zhejiang University	China	75
8	Hanyang University	South Korea	73
9	Southeast University	China	69
10	Tsinghua University	China	69
11	Shenzhen University	China	68
12	Peking University	China	67
13	Wuhan University	China	67
14	Pusan National University	South Korea	65
15	Sun Yat-sen University	China	64

Funders#

South Africa funders whose papers are cited most, since 2023
#	Funder	Links
1	National Research Foundation	5,044
2	University of Johannesburg	220
3	University of Pretoria	143
4	Universiteit Stellenbosch	122
5	University of Cape Town	119
6	Inyuvesi Yakwazulu-Natali	28
7	University of South Africa	27
8	Bradlow Foundation	26
9	North-West University	24
10	Cape Peninsula University of Technology	22
11	Central University of Technology	21
12	Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, South Africa	21
13	Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust	20
14	South African Medical Research Council	20
15	National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences	18

What papers from South Africa cite#

Research funded elsewhere that papers from South Africa cite, since 2023
#	Funding country	Links
1	China	1,401
2	United States	708
3	United Kingdom	575
4	Spain	298
5	Germany	287
6	Australia	225
7	Italy	216
8	South Korea	197
9	Canada	177
10	Netherlands	174
11	Sweden	153
12	Japan	137
13	France	122
14	Finland	120
15	Portugal	111

Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Who uses research funded from South Africa. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/supply-chain/south-africa

@misc{scholar4ai-supply-chain-south-africa,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Who uses research funded from South Africa},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/supply-chain/south-africa}},
  urldate = {2026-10-31},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

Free to reuse for non-commercial purposes with attribution (CC BY-NC 4.0).