A Scientometric analysis of landslides research in the western branch of East African Rift (DR Congo)

The Albertine Rift, which is part of the East African Rift, is a region prone to repetitive slope instability due to its intense rainfall, high weathering rate, and consistent seismic activities. Although this has led to several publications about landslides in the past. Unfortunately, not many attempts at gathering systematic data on landslide research in the western Albertine rift have been made so far. This study analyses the research carried out in landslides in the Albertine rift during 2003-2019 on several parameters including the title, authors, institutions, publication year, keywords, the names of journals publishing the articles, and language. The majority of papers were written in French (62%). Geo-Eco-Trop journal has published the greatest number of papers (46%). The majority of authors (67%) produced only one paper. Moreover, Moeyersons had the highest co-authorship connections (15), followed by Dille, Trefois, and Nobil with 14, 10, and 7 connections respectively. 13 institutions from 6 countries contributed to the researches. The most producing institutions were Royal Museum for Central Africa, followed by the “Universite Officielle de Bukavu”.  49 Keywords were used, among which, 43 (88%) appeared only once and 6 (12%) appeared twice. The most frequently occurring words are landslides and the tropical environment.