Topics

This chapter provides an analysis of the topics of the publications. Topics that meaningfully represent the content of publications were collected and grouped. These were analysed by the year, the types (articles or chapters), the source (the WoS and others), the empirical or theoretical nature of the publications, the kind of methodologies (quantitative, qualitative or mixed), the composition of authorship and the types of collaborations. The chapter also focuses on the trends of the evolution, emergence and disappearance of topics. The co-word analysis shows the connections between hundreds of topics. The chapter reports the strong and weak connections between topics, type, methodology and collaboration that help in understanding African sociology from the perspectives of topics.