The Deputy Librarian, Mr. Phillip Ndhlovu attended the Skills and Competencies in Bibliometrics and Research Impact Services Workshop at Western University, Ontario, Canada from the 26^th of June 2023. Thirteen Academic Librarians from 12 countries across Africa visited Western University for a week long bibliometrics and research impact (BRI) summer school. Participants were selected from a pool of 113 applicants across the continent to attend the school at no cost, with Faculty of Information & Media Studies at Western University (FIMS) covering travel and accommodation for each participant.

“I am happy that I was selected from a pool of 113 participants. I got the opportunity to develop professionally through knowledge exchange with library science professionals. Principally library support for bibliometrics and research impact (BRI) analysis is an emerging role for academic libraries and a growing area of library resources and service. This entails provision of services to researchers, and the university”.

It is petinent to say bibliometrics plays an important role in ranking the performance of a researcher, research groups, institutions, or journals. In this view, BRI is useful for all groups of stakeholders - for the researcher, bibliometrics is a useful tool for determining the highest impact journals to publish in and also identify potential collaborators or competitors in a subject area. It further helps track the development of a research field and is helpful in identifying influential and highly cited papers, researchers, or research groups. From a student's standpoint, it helps them determine the most important papers on a topic and find the most important journals in a field. Bibliometrics also helps identify leading researchers and articles in a particular field hence enhancing scholarly communication.