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Middle East: research productivity and performance across nations

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Abstract

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the research productivity and performance of countries that fall in the Middle East. The data was gathered from the research analytical tool of Thomson Reuters, InCites. The data was collected over a period of 33 years (1981 through 2013) with “global comparisons” as the dataset and “compare countries/territories” as the report name under “national comparisons”. The data was collected from 15 countries of Middle East (as per InCites categorization) viz; Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Each country was assessed on the basis of six parameters: total no. of web of science documents; total citation count; average citations per documents, percentage of cited documents; impact relative to the world; and aggregate performance indicator. On all these parameters, Israel occupies the first position. The 2nd rank in terms of total web of science documents and total citation count is occupied by Turkey. Kuwait has 2nd highest percentage of cited documents, and Lebanon occupies 2nd rank in terms of relative impact (in comparison to world). In terms of aggregate performance, Qatar ranks 2nd.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Library and Information Science, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India

    Sumeer Gul

  2. Department of Botany, Government College for Women, M.A.Road, Srinagar, India

    Nahida Tun Nisa

  3. Islamic University of Science and Technology, Kashmir, India

    Tariq Ahmad Shah

  4. Department of Library and Information Science, University of Jammu, Jammu, India

    Sangita Gupta

  5. Department of Political Science, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India

    Asifa Jan

  6. Giessen University, Giessen, Germany

    Suhail Ahmad

  7. Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany

    Suhail Ahmad

  8. Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

    Suhail Ahmad

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  1. Sumeer Gul
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  2. Nahida Tun Nisa
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Correspondence to Sumeer Gul.

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Gul, S., Nisa, N.T., Shah, T.A. et al. Middle East: research productivity and performance across nations. Scientometrics 105, 1157–1166 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1722-3

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