Scientific publications from Arab world in leading journals of Integrative and Complementary Medicine: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

BackgroundBibliometric analysis is increasingly employed as a useful tool to assess the quantity and quality of research performance. The specific goal of the current study was to evaluate the performance of research output originating from Arab world and published in international Integrative and Complementary Medicine (ICM) journals.MethodsOriginal scientific publications and reviews from the 22 Arab countries that were published in 22 international peer-reviewed ICM journals during all previous years up to December 31st 2013, were screened using the Web of Science databases.ResultsFive hundred and ninety-one documents were retrieved from 19 ICM journals. The h-index of the set of papers under study was 47. The highest h-index was 27 for Morocco, 21 for Jordan, followed by 19 for each Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), and Egypt, and the lowest h-index was 1 for each of Comoros, Qatar, and Syrian Arab Republic. No data related to ICM were published from Djibouti, and Mauritania. After adjusting for economy and population power, Somalia (89), Morocco (32.5), Egypt (31.1), Yemen (21.4), and Palestine (21.2) had the highest research productivity. The total number of citations was 9,466, with an average citation of 16 per document. The study identified 262 (44.3 %) documents with 39 countries in Arab-foreign country collaborations. Arab authors collaborated most with countries in Europe (24.2 %), followed by countries in the Asia-Pacific region (9.8 %).ConclusionScientific research output in the ICM field in the Arab world region is increasing. Most of publications from Arab world in ICM filed were driven by societal use of medicinal plants and herbs. Search for new therapies from available low cost medicinal plants in Arab world has motivated many researchers in academia and pharmaceutical industry. Further investigation is required to support these findings in a wider journal as well as to improve research output in the field of ICM from Arab world region by investing in more national and international collaborative research project.

A bibliometric-based evaluation on environmental research in the Arab world

“…Furthermore, the collaboration between Arab world and Western Europe produced the high rates of citations (1485), followed by the collaboration with Northern America which produced (491) citations. The high figures of collaboration between Arab scholars and their counterparts in Western Europe and Northern America can attributed to the fact that the majority of Arab researchers graduated from Europe and US universities, and many of the graduated researchers and students from Arab world have gained their education and training in environmental field of research from these two regions where the principles and concepts of environmental sustainability measures are being emphasized in research and science (Zyoud et al 2015b).…”

“…Furthermore, it is a well-recognized technique for conducting systematic analyses (van Raan 2005). This kind of research is common in different disciplines such as in industrial and pharmaceutical wastewater research (Zyoud et al 2016a, b), medicine (Zyoud et al 2015a), hospitality management (García-Lillo et al 2016), clinical research (Jain et al 2015), membrane science (Fu and Ho 2015), quality of water (Hu et al 2010), desalination research (Zyoud and Fuchs-Hanusch 2016) and toxicology research .…”

Arab world’s growing contribution to global leishmaniasis research (1998–2017): a bibliometric study

“…The WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region reported a very high proportion (82%) of countries endemic for cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis [4]. The status of the health-research system in the Arab world has been described previously in numerous areas of health such as dengue research [21], pharmaceutical wastewater research [57], integrative and complementary medicine research [58], toxicology research [59], tobacco smoking research [60], breast cancer research [61], and infectious disease research [62]. Health-research systems in the Arab world are perceived as being non-productive system due to low priority in national research funding levels and development planning [63][64][65].…”

Opinion of Arab Physicians on Factors Enhancing or Disabling their Publishing Biomedical Research

“…Is it due to disparity in hiring, earning, funding of research [10,11] or due to their smaller numbers or to their triple roles being in addition housewives and mothers? Qualitative studies on this issue are needed as studies found are bibliometric [12]. However, authors' names are not always indicating their gender, as there is no standardized way for writing the authors' name.…”