Several studies discussed the characteristics of authors who published in Library and Information Science journals. Although none focused specifically on Arab librarians as authors, the current study attempts to reveal the scholarly contributions to library literature by Arab librarians. The study describes and analyses the journal research publications in Library and Information Science journals by professional librarians from 1981 to 2010. Single-author articles are found to be highly followed by two and three authored articles. The average degree of collaboration between authors in Library and Information Science journals is 9.64% (only 19 journal articles written by at least two or three authors). Finally, this study provides recommendations to Arab librarians to encourage them to be engaged in research in the Library and Information Science discipline.
In response to the current trends in dealing with data in academia, various research institutions and commercial entities around the world are building new programmes to fill the gaps in workforce demand in specific disciplines, including data curation, big data, data management, data science and data analytics. Thus, the aim of the present study was to reveal the reality of data science education in the Middle East and to determine the opportunities and challenges for teaching data science in the region. Thirteen countries in the Middle East were offering 48 data science programmes at the time of the study. The results reveal that these data science programmes significantly use the words ‘data’ and ‘analytics’ in their names. With regard to the academic affiliations of the data science programmes, the study found that they are offered in a variety of schools, especially computer science, information technology and business. Moreover, the study found that computer science is the dominant trend in the programmes. Data science programmes have a significant overlap with other programmes, especially statistics and computer science, because of the interdisciplinary nature of this field. Data science schools in the Middle East differ in terms of their programme titles, programme descriptions, course catalogues, curriculum structures and course objectives. Broadly, this study may be useful for those who are seeking to establish a data science programme or to strengthen data science curricula at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
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