Review of publication productivity of medicine and pharmacy schools in four Arab Universities

Abstract

Context: The publication productivity of colleges of medicine and pharmacy in four Arab universities, namely King Saud University, Assiut University, University of Khartoum and University of Jordan located in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan and Jordan, respectively, was compared. Aims: To determine colleges' publication contribution relative to their universities and countries in the period 2005-2010. Materials and Methods: The Web of Science bibliographic database was used to determine article publications as well as US patent office and EPO websites were also used to determine the number of international patents. Settings and Design: Publication productivity was analyzed and rankings were constructed based on the number of publications and average number per population or staff members for countries, universities and colleges. The Web of Science bibliographic database for number of published articles and US patent office and EPO websites for number of international patents were used. A one-way analysis of variance was used to describe statistical significance when probability value (P) was less than 0.05. Results: Publication productivity was analyzed and rankings were constructed based on the number of publications and average number per population or staff members for countries, universities and colleges. Colleges of medicine and pharmacy have a contribution of about 25% of the overall university publications for almost all universities. Generally, colleges of medicine had higher percent share than colleges of pharmacy in university publications, with one exception in college of pharmacy in University of Jordan. Conclusion: In general, many universities and colleges of medicine and pharmacy have been established, which could explain the increase in scientific published work in the four Arab countries in the last two decades. However, upon performing a ranking many individual variations were observed depending on the methods used for evaluation.