By Wakirike Herald

The University of Calabar has announced that four of its academics feature among the world’s top two per cent of scientists in the 2026 Elsevier/Stanford databases, describing their inclusion as recognition of the institution’s research visibility.

The university disclosed this in a statement issued on Saturday in Calabar by its Public Relations Officer, Mr Effiong Eyo.

The scholars are Prof. Edet Aniekan in Engineering; Dr Ikeuba Alexander in Enabling and Strategic Technologies; Prof. Meremikwu Madu in Clinical Medicine; and Prof. Chukwuemeka Okafor in Enabling and Strategic Technologies.

Their inclusion, the university said, highlights research contributions across the three fields and represents a source of pride for its academic community.

How the Scholars Were Identified

According to the statement, the recognition draws on the latest Elsevier/Stanford author databases, which contain citation indicators covering career-long impact up to the end of 2025 and single-year impact for the 2025 calendar year.

The university said its representation was identified through an independent analysis compiled by Dr Valentine Owan, a UniCal academic, using the official 2026 data.

Owan’s analysis extracted Nigerian records from both databases, grouped researchers by university affiliation and counted each author once within the relevant database.

Affiliations connected to constituent colleges and teaching hospitals were assigned to their parent universities where those relationships were clear.

Research institutes, standalone hospitals, government organisations and polytechnics were excluded from university groupings.

Recognition Has Limits

The statement also drew a distinction between the recognition of individual researchers and an assessment of an entire university.

Quoting Owan, it explained that the institutional comparison measured the number of authors associated with each university in the respective databases. It should therefore not be interpreted as a ranking of universities by research quality or overall performance.

The announcement did not specify whether each of the four scholars appeared in the career-long database, the single-year database or both.

For UniCal, the recognition brings attention to the work of individual academics whose research has gained citation visibility. Its wider significance must be understood within the scope of the databases, without treating individual inclusion as a comprehensive verdict on institutional performance.

Wakirike Herald
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