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Arab Spring’s effect on scientific productivity and research performance in Arab countries

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Abstract

This study focuses on the Arab literature published by researchers from all 22 members of the Arab League during the last 5 years before Arab Spring (2006–2010) and the 5 years after Arab Spring (2011–2015), in order to identify effects of the Arab Spring on research in the Arab world both performance and Productivity, based on bibliometrics analysis of the data extracted from Web of Science and InCites Essential Science Indicators provided by Thomson Reuters, and by using the statistical software package SPSS. The total productivity of Arab researchers before the Arab Spring was (103,917) document. Countries that witnessed revolution and government overthrown produced the largest productivity (42.5%). The Arab countries’ production doubled after the Arab Spring (214,864 document). Countries that witnessed Minor protests advanced to second place (30%) as a result of the leap that occurred in Saudi Arabia publications. The extent of collaboration among Arab countries before the Arab Spring was twice the number of publications in which they collaborated with the rest of the world. The number of citations was positive after the Arab Spring for 12 countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Egypt and United Arab Emirates, while it was negative for 10 countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon. There is no significant difference between Arab countries exposed to different levels of protests of Arab Spring, and between Counties’ performance after and before Arab Spring. However, counties’ productivity after Arab Spring has increased higher than before Arab Spring.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Library and Information Science Department, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

    Bahaa Ibrahim

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  1. Bahaa Ibrahim
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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 8, 9, 10 and 11.

Table 8 Language distributions of the Arab countries publications before (2006–2010) and after (2011–2015) the Arab Spring
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Table 9 Types of Arab countries publications before (2006–2010) and after (2011–2015) the Arab Spring
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Table 10 Research areas of Arab countries publications before (2006–2010) and after (2011–2015) the Arab Spring
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Table 11 Scientific collaboration of Arab countries, either in-between or with other countries of the world grouped across continents
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Ibrahim, B. Arab Spring’s effect on scientific productivity and research performance in Arab countries. Scientometrics 117, 1555–1586 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2935-z

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