Abstract
BackgroundBibliometric studies are increasingly being used for research assessment by involving the application of statistical methods to scientific publications to obtain the bibliographics for each country. The main objective of this study was to analyse the research productivity originating from 13 Middle Eastern Arab (MEA) countries with articles published in toxicology journals.MethodsData from January 1, 2003 till December 31, 2012 were searched for documents with specific words in the toxicology field as a “source title” in any one of the 13 MEA countries. Research productivity was evaluated based on a methodology developed and used in other bibliometric studies. Research productivity was adjusted to the national population and nominal gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.ResultsDocuments (n = 1,240) were retrieved from 73 international peer-reviewed toxicology journals. The h-index of the retrieved documents was 39. Of the 73 journal titles, 52 (69.9%) have their IF listed in the ISI Journal Citation Reports 2012; 198 documents (16.0%) were published in journals that had no official IF. After adjusting for economy and population power, Egypt (193.6), Palestine (18.1), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) (13.0), and Jordan (11.5) had the highest research productivity. Countries with large economies, such as the Kuwait, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman, tended to rank relatively low after adjustment of GDP. The total number of citations at the time of data analysis (August 4, 2013) was 10,991, with a median (interquartile range) of 4 (1–11). MEA collaborated more with countries in the MEA regions (16.7%), especially KSA, Egypt, and UAE, followed by Europe (14.4%), especially with the United Kingdom and Germany.ConclusionsThe present data show a promising rise and a good start for toxicology research activity in toxicology journals in the Arab world. Research output is low in some countries, which can be improved by investing in more international and national collaborative research projects in the field of toxicology.
Highlights
Bibliometric studies are increasingly being used for research assessment by involving the application of statistical methods to scientific publications to obtain the bibliographics for each country
The total number of documents which were published in toxicology journals obtained by entering the word “toxicology” and related terms in the Scopus search engine as a source title without specifying the name of any country was 74,468 documents
According to Scopus, the 13 Middle Eastern Arab (MEA) countries produced 60,477 biomedical publications during 2003–2012, which is around 49 times higher than those produced in toxicology journals
Summary
Bibliometric studies are increasingly being used for research assessment by involving the application of statistical methods to scientific publications to obtain the bibliographics for each country. Bibliometric analysis is a useful tool to obtain information about the current state of research in particular areas and allows researchers to identify and undertake new lines of research [17] This type of analysis is a research method used in library and information sciences and utilises quantitative analysis and statistics to obtain the bibliographical works within a given field, topic, institute, or country [18,19,20]. The most important bibliometric indicators for research capacity and productivity include the number of publications, the amount of peerreviewed scientific journal articles, the number of total citations, and the type of publications [20,21,22] Such a study will lead to a better understanding of the current and future status of toxicology in the Middle East. Evaluation of toxicological research output in the Arab world is important for monitoring and improving this activity; this could help in putting research activities in the Arab countries into perspective
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