Bibliometric analysis of diabetes mellitus research output from Middle Eastern Arab countries during the period (1996–2012)

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to analyze research productivity originating from Middle East Arab (MEA) countries in the field of diabetes mellitus (DM). Data from January 1, 1996 till December 31, 2012 were searched for documents with specific words in diabetes as a "source title" and a list of 13 MEA countries as affiliation country. Research productivity was evaluated based on number of publications, citation analysis, indexing in Institute for Scientific Information and impact factor (IF). The 13 MEA countries published a total of 479 documents in 41 diabetes journals. This number represents 0.75 % of the total documents produced globally in the field of DM. The number of published documents increased by around fivefold from early 2000 to 2012. Of the 41 journal titles retrieved, 24 (58.5 %) had their IF listed in the journal citation reports 2012. Forty-two documents (14.5 %) were published in journals that had no official IF. The total number of citations for documents published from MEA countries in the field of DM, at the time of data analysis, was 5,565 with an h index of 35. The median (inter-quartile range) citation for documents from the 13 MEA countries was 4 (1---11). The top productive institution in the field of DM was United Arab Emirates University with 51 documents (10.6 %). Authors from MEA countries collaborated mostly with authors in countries like United Kingdom, USA, and Germany. The present data show promising and relatively good diabetes research productivity in MEA countries especially after 2008.