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Pre-print: Maurya, Sanjay Kumar, Shukla, Akhandanand & Ngurtinkhuma, R. K. (2019).
Contribution of Library and Information Science Research in Scientific Research of Middle East
Countries: A Scientometric Assessment. KIIT Journal of Library and Information Management. 6(2),
194-203.
Contribution of Library and Information Science Research in Scientific
Research of Middle East Countries: A Scientometric Assessment
Sanjay Kumar Maurya
Research Scholar
Department of Library & Information Science
Mizoram University, Aizawl
Email: sanjay2015maurya@gmail.com
Dr. Akhandanand Shukla
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Assistant Professor
Department of Library & Information Science
Mizoram University, Aizawl
Email: akhandanandshukla@gmail.com
Orcid id: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7157-5600
Dr. R. K. Ngurtinkhuma
Professor
Department of Library & Information Science
Mizoram University, Aizawl
Email: rkn05@rediffmail.com
Abstract
The study deals with the scientometric assessment of scientific research of Middle East
countries and contribution of LIS research in scientific research during 1996-2015 based on
Scopus database. The study carried out in terms of total documents, citable documents,
citations, self-citations, citations per document, self-citations per document, Relative Citation
Impact, h-index and dh-index performance of Middle East countries. Israel, Turkey, and Iran
have been found as leading countries in all terms amongst Middle East countries whereas
situation of Iraq is the worst.
Keywords: Research Output, Research Contribution, LIS Research, Scientific Research,
Middle East.
1. Introduction
Scientific research and its dissemination are crucial for societal development. Nowadays,
scientific research production becomes the most important phenomenon in developed nations
to grow significantly in all terms. Developing nations are also trying to produce a significant
level of scientific research to cope up with the current problems. Scientific research
production becomes one of the important criteria for countries to represent their competitive
potentiality in all-round development. Library and Information Science (LIS) is the area
which deals with the acquisition of such kind of research and its dissemination to society at
large. Like other scientific subject domains, the LIS domain is also important for country’s
development and in such kind of scenario, LIS research production becomes crucial for
scientific and societal development. The measurement of research output is one of the
important indicators to determine the impact and efficiency of research to develop, plan or
adopt better and more efficient scientific policies. In the last two decades, there is a
tremendous growth has been observed in terms of publications. “Scientometric studies
involves statistical and thesaurus method to analyze the general laws of the development of
science as a knowledge system and practical recommendations for raising research efficiency
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Corresponding author
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in any subject field” (Amudhavalli, 1977). Scientometric measurement helps in the ranking of
author, institution or a country. The study used scientometric indicators to analyze
comparative research output of Middle East countries in scientific disciplines as well as in
LIS discipline. The Middle East is one of the important regions of the Asian continent. It
includes 18 countries. The study is based on Scopus database which covers 16 countries of
Middle East in terms of scientific research and LIS research. The 16 countries included in the
Middle East region are Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman,
Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and
Yemen.
2. Literature Review
Research outputs of Middle East countries have been studied by various researchers in
different aspects. Iran’s relative share in the scientific output of the world increased from
0.0003% to 0.29% during 1970-2003, and significant increase observed in the terms of a
number of articles in Iran after the Iraq-Iran war (Moin et al., 2005). Israel was the leading
nation in the Middle East in terms of total citations and citations per document while Turkey
and Iran were leading countries in scientific document productivity during 1996 to 2014
(Cavacini, 2016). Share of Middle East countries (2.72%) research output in world’s
scientific production is very low in General Internal Medicine as per WOS database
(Hodhodinezhad et al., 2013). Gul et al. (2015) evaluated the research productivity and
performance of Middle East countries during 1981 to 2013 on the basis of six parameters and
found that Israel was leading in all terms while Turkey was 2
nd
in total research document &
total citation; and Kuwait was 2
nd
in terms of cited documents as per WOS. Onyancha (2007)
examined Library and Information Science (LIS) literature as produced and published by
researchers in Africa during 1986 to 2006 in order to establish the productivity and impact of
LIS research & found South Africa and Nigeria produced over 70% of the total LIS research
output in Africa (i.e. 992). The remaining 24 countries produced a mere 30% of Africa’s total
LIS research output. In a study, Gulgoz et al. (2002) analyzed Turkey’s output in Social
Science publications during 1970 to 1999 and found that there is a high rate of increase in the
number of publications but Social Science publication’s rate of increase is lower than the
increase in Science publications. Uzun & Ozel (1996) analyzed 187 papers published by
Turkish astronomers during 1985 to 1994 in the journal on Astronomy & Astrophysics
indexed in SCI and found that the number of citations an “average” paper received has
decreased gradually during the study period. In another study by Uzun (1996) analyzed
publication efforts in Physics by Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey
during 1990-1994 and found a total of 2368 papers from these countries in international
journals; Egypt and Turkey produced 75% of the total publication output.
South Asian countries 50 years research output have been analyzed by Uddin & Singh (2014)
and found that South Asian region is contributing only 2.86% of the research output of the
world and India is the highest research output contributor amongst South Asian countries.
Further in category wise result of research output, Physical Sciences and Life Sciences
contributions were more than other categories. Citations were not increasing in proportion to
research output and the USA is the topmost research collaborative country with South Asian
countries. Djalalinia et al. (2015) studied obesity research over past 24 years in Middle East
countries using Scopus and found that number of obesity related research documents and
citations had increasing trend in the region. On obesity, 415126 research documents have
been published and from them 3.56% were belong to Middle East countries. Israel, Turkey,
and Iran were leading countries in terms of citations while USA was the most collaborative
country with Middle East countries. Surulinathi & Prasanna Kumari (2016) examined the
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growth of publications, citation rankings and h-index of literature on Library and Information
Science in the Asian region by the use of SCImago data for the period of 1996-2015. The
Asiatic countries have contributed 19149 publications and received 124660 citations where
China has the highest h-index value 58. It has been observed that China leads in all the
aspects like a number of documents, citations, self-citations, h-index, and number of citable
documents followed by Taiwan and India amongst Asian countries. Naheem et al. (2017)
analyzed Chronic Liver Disease research output in SAARC countries during 1996-2015 by
using Scopus database and found 2,312 (3.49% of global output in CLD) documents and
India is leading country in terms of publication share, leading institutions, and authors among
member countries of SAARC. Emami et al. (2018) studies diabetes research during 2007-
2013 in Middle East countries using Web of Science and concluded that scientific production
and local and global citations in diabetes research in Iran (21.7% of diabetes research in the
Middle East) have elevated the country to a prominent position and the top ranking countries
in diabetic research were Turkey, Iran, and Israel, respectively.
3. Methodology
The study is confined to measure the research performance of total scientific output and
Library and Information Science (LIS) research output by Middle East countries during the
period of 1996 to 2015. The secondary data was gathered from the Journal & Country Rank
database of Scopus. The data was gathered for all scientific disciplines as well as LIS
discipline for Middle East countries from 1996 to 2015; and data processed using the
spreadsheet in terms of the number of documents, citable documents, citations, self-citations,
and h-index. Following parameters were analyzed in the study:
• Total documents
• Citable documents
• Citations and Citations per document
• Relative Citation Impact
• Self-citations and Self-citations per document
• h-index performance
4. Analysis
a) Document Productivity
There are total 1466949 scientific documents observed during 1996-2015 from Middle East
countries and a total of 3285 documents were observed for LIS field which share 0.22% of
total scientific documents (as shown in Table 1).
Table 1: Document productivity of Middle East countries
Rank
Country Scientific
Documents
% LIS
Documents
% % share of LIS
in Scientific
Documents
1 Turkey 434806 29.64 465 14.15 0.1
2 Iran 333474 22.73 715 21.76 0.21
3 Israel 295747 20.16 1237 37.65 0.41
4 Egypt 137350 9.36 130 3.95 0.09
5 Saudi Arabia 111117 7.57 209 6.36 0.18
6 UAE 31366 2.13 123 3.74 0.39
7 Jordan 28234 1.92 92 2.8 0.32
8 Lebanon 20815 1.41 41 1.24 0.19
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9 Kuwait 18468 1.25 124 3.77 0.67
10 Qatar 13438 0.91 57 1.73 0.42
11 Oman 12846 0.87 49 1.49 0.38
12 Iraq 11605 0.79 4 0.12 0.03
13 Syrian Arab
Republic
5744 0.39 7 0.21 0.12
14 Bahrain 4657 0.31 19 0.57 0.4
15 Palestine 4506 0.3 4 0.12 0.08
16 Yemen 2776 0.18 9 0.27 0.32
Total 1466949 100 3285 100 Avg. = 0.22
The highest scientific document contribution is found from Turkey (29.64%) followed by
Iran (22.73%), and Israel (20.16%) while the lowest contribution is observed from Yemen
(0.18%). In terms of LIS documents contribution, the highest documents were from Israel
(37.65%) followed by Iran (21.76%) and Turkey (14.15%) while the lowest document
contribution was observed from Palestine & Iraq (0.12%). The LIS document contribution to
the total scientific document of each country is calculated and it is observed that, the highest
LIS share to scientific documents observed from Kuwait (0.67%) followed by Qatar (0.42%)
and Israel (0.41%) while the lowest share was from Iraq (0.03%).
b) Citable Documents
Citable documents include the number of documents published by the journals in the
previous three years (selected year documents are excluded) and exclusively articles, reviews
and conference papers are considered. During the study period, a total of 1389891 citable
documents observed in scientific disciplines and 3196 citable documents observed in LIS
discipline which is 0.22% of total scientific citable documents (as shown in Table 2).
Table 2: Citable documents of Middle East countries
Country Scientific
Citable
Documents
% LIS
Citable
Documents
% % share of LIS in
Scientific
Documents
Turkey 407064 29.28 447 13.98 0.1
Iran 323299 23.26 710 22.21 0.21
Israel 274748 19.76 1198 37.48 0.43
Egypt 133147 9.57 128 4 0.09
Saudi Arabia 106187 7.63 204 6.38 0.19
UAE 29259 2.1 116 3.62 0.39
Jordan 27369 1.96 91 2.84 0.33
Lebanon 19040 1.36 39 1.22 0.2
Kuwait 17687 1.27 121 3.78 0.68
Qatar 12524 0.9 54 1.68 0.43
Oman 11919 0.85 47 1.47 0.39
Iraq 11042 0.79 4 0.12 0.03
Syrian Arab
Republic
5459 0.39 7 0.21 0.12
Bahrain 4225 0.3 17 0.53 0.4
Palestine 4224 0.3 4 0.12 0.09
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Yemen 2698 0.19 9 0.28 0.33
Total 1389891 100 3196 100 Avg.= 0.22
The highest scientific citable document was found for Turkey (29.28%) followed by Iran
(23.26%) and Israel (19.76%) while the lowest scientific citable document observed for
Yemen (0.19%).
In terms of LIS citable document contribution, the highest citable document found for Israel
(37.48%) followed by Iran (22.21%) and Turkey (13.98%) while the lowest citable document
found for Iraq & Palestine (0.12%). LIS citable document contribution to the total scientific
citable document of each country is calculated and it is observed that the highest contribution
was shared by Kuwait (0.68%) followed by Israel & Qatar (0.46%) and UAE (0.39%) while
the lowest contribution was shared by Iraq (0.03%).
c) Citation of Documents
Table 3 represents citations related data of scientific documents & LIS documents in Middle
East countries.
Table 3: Document citations of Middle East countries
Country Citations to
Scientific
Documents
% Citations
to LIS
Documents
% % share of LIS
in Scientific
Documents
Israel 5826878 41.23 25984 67.28 0.44
Turkey 3509424 24.83 4468 11.56 0.12
Iran 1954324 13.83 3424 8.86 0.17
Egypt 1009954 7.14 1487 3.85 0.14
Saudi Arabia 748069 5.29 859 2.22 0.11
UAE 210873 1.49 552 1.42 0.26
Jordan 201400 1.42 423 1.09 0.21
Lebanon 186558 1.32 294 0.76 0.15
Kuwait 157888 1.11 630 1.63 0.39
Oman 87333 0.61 129 0.33 0.14
Qatar 71382 0.5 177 0.45 0.24
Syrian Arab
Republic
53601 0.37 18 0.04 0.03
Iraq 39145 0.27 2 0.005 0.005
Palestine 30338 0.21 14 0.03 0.04
Bahrain 24769 0.17 101 0.26 0.4
Yemen 18951 0.13 58 0.15 0.3
Total 14130887 100 38620 100 Avg.= 0.27
Citations have been calculated by the number of citations received in the selected year by a
journal to the documents published in the three previous years i.e. citations received in year X
to documents published in years X-1, X-2, and X-3 (Scopus). A total of 14130887 citations
received to scientific discipline documents & 38620 citations to LIS discipline documents.
The contributory share of LIS documents citations to scientific documents citations is very
low i.e. 0.27%.
For the scientific document, maximum citation received by Israel (41.23%) followed by
Turkey (24.83) and Iran (13.83%) whereas the lowest citations received by Yemen (0.13%).
In terms of LIS documents citations, the maximum citations received by Israel (67.28%)
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followed by Turkey (11.56%) and Iran (8.86%) whereas the lowest citations received by Iraq
(0.005%). While calculating the share of LIS citations to the total scientific citations country
wise, the maximum share was by Israel (0.44%) followed by Bahrain (0.4%) and Kuwait
(0.39%) whereas the lowest share was by Iraq (0.005%).
d) Self-citations of Documents
Table 4 displays the Middle East countries self-citations to research documents in both
scientific discipline and LIS discipline.
Table 4: Self-citations of documents in Middle East countries
Country Self-citations
of Scientific
Documents
% Self-citations
of LIS
Documents
% % share of LIS
in Scientific
Documents
Turkey 854126 30.47 722 12.05 0.08
Israel 775709 27.67 3844 64.16 0.49
Iran 729365 26.02 888 14.82 0.12
Egypt 198941 7.09 70 1.16 0.03
Saudi Arabia 122715 4.37 108 1.8 0.08
Jordan 24913 0.88 100 1.66 0.4
UAE 21957 0.78 64 1.06 0.29
Lebanon 18136 0.64 30 0.5 0.16
Kuwait 18112 0.64 88 1.46 0.48
Oman 10379 0.37 19 0.31 0.18
Qatar 8900 0.31 22 0.36 0.24
Syrian Arab
Republic
5900 0.21 0 0 0
Iraq 5022 0.17 0 0 0
Palestine 3884 0.13 8 0.13 0.2
Bahrain 2346 0.08 4 0.06 0.17
Yemen 2154 0.07 24 0.4 1.11
Total 2802559 100 5991 100 Avg. = 0.21
There are total 2802599 self-citations for all scientific documents and 5991 self-citations for
LIS documents is found that denotes 0.21% share of self-citations by LIS documents to the
scientific documents self-citations. The majority (84.16%) of self-citations in scientific
documents were obtained from three countries, the highest by Turkey (30.47%) followed by
Israel (27.67%) and Iran (26.02%). Yemen contributed the least self-citations (0.07%) to total
scientific documents self-citations.
Self-citations in LIS discipline documents was found the highest from Israel which alone
contributed 64.16% of self-citations and the remaining 15 countries had only 35.84% of self-
citations among the Middle East countries. The Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq does not have
any self-citations for LIS documents. Self-citations share by LIS documents to the total
scientific documents self-citations against each country was calculated and found Israel
(0.49%) as the highest contributor followed by Kuwait (0.48%) and UAE (0.29%). As the
Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq does not have any self-citations for LIS documents so they
have not shared any self-citations for scientific documents.
e) Citations and Self-citations per Document
Table 5 reveals the citations and self-citations per document for both scientific discipline
documents and LIS discipline documents.
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Table 5: Citations and Self-citations per document of Middle East countries
Country Citations per
Scientific
Document
Citations per
LIS
Document
Self-citations
per Scientific
Document
Self-citations
per LIS
Document
Israel 19.7 21.01 2.62 3.1
Syrian Arab
Republic
9.33 2.57 1.02 0
Lebanon 8.96 7.17 0.87 0.73
Kuwait 8.55 5.08 0.98 0.7
Turkey 8.07 9.61 1.96 1.55
Egypt 7.35 11.44 1.44 0.53
Jordan 7.13 4.6 0.88 1.08
Yemen 6.83 6.44 0.77 2.66
Oman 6.8 2.63 0.8 0.38
Palestine 6.73 3.5 0.86 2
Saudi Arabia 6.73 4.11 1.1 0.51
UAE 6.72 4.49 0.7 0.52
Iran 5.86 4.79 2.18 1.24
Bahrain 5.32 5.32 0.5 0.21
Qatar 5.31 3.11 0.66 0.38
Iraq 3.37 0.5 0.43 0
Average 7.67 6.02 1.11 0.97
An average of 7.67 citations per document was found for scientific discipline documents and
6.02 citations per document were found for LIS discipline documents. In case of self-citations
per document, an average of 1.11 self-citations per document for scientific documents was
found whereas for LIS documents it was 0.97 self-citations per LIS document. Among the
Middle East countries, Israel has the highest citations per scientific document whereas Iraq
has the lowest citations per scientific document. In case of citations per LIS document, it was
found that Israel (21.01) has the highest citations per LIS document followed by Egypt
(11.44) and Turkey (9.61) while Iraq has the lowest (0.5) citations per LIS document. In
terms of self-citations per scientific document, Israel has the highest (2.62) self-citations per
scientific document followed by Iran (2.18) and Turkey (1.96) and the lowest self-citations
per scientific document were found for Iraq (0.43). The self-citations per LIS document were
found the highest for Israel (3.1) followed by Yemen (2.66) and Palestine (2) while the
lowest for the Syrian Arab Republic (0) and Iraq (0).
f) Relative Citation Impact
Relative Citation Impact (RCI) is more robust than other indicators in the sense that it
measures both the influence as well as visibility of research activity, irrespective of the level
of evaluation either country or institute or author (Elango et al., 2013). It is calculated with
the following formula:
RCI = Country’s share of total citations/ Country’s share of total publications
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If RCI = 1, indicates that the country’s citation rate is equal to average citation rate; RCI > 1,
indicates that the country’s citation rate is higher than the average citation rate and also
implies high impact of research in that country; RCI < 1, indicates that the country’s citation
rate is lower than the average citation rate and also implies that the research efforts are higher
than its impact.
Table 6: Relative Citation Impact of Middle East countries
Country RCI Value
Scientific Documents LIS Documents
Israel 2.04 1.78
Syrian Arab
Republic
0.94 0.19
Lebanon 0.93 0.61
Kuwait 0.88 0.43
Turkey 0.83 0.81
Egypt 0.76 0.97
Jordan 0.73 0.38
Yemen 0.72 0.55
Oman 0.7 0.22
Palestine 0.7 0.25
Saudi Arabia 0.69 0.34
UAE 0.69 0.37
Iran 0.6 0.4
Bahrain 0.54 0.45
Qatar 0.54 0.26
Iraq 0.34 0.04
Table 6 depicts the Relative Citation Impact of Middle East countries. RCI value is found to
be more than 1 for Israel in both scientific (2.04) as well as LIS documents (1.78) which
indicate the high impact of research publications for Israel compared to other Middle East
countries. RCI value is seen minimum for Iraq in both scientific (0.34) & LIS (0.04)
documents which indicate research efforts are higher than its impact.
g) h-index & dh-index
The h-index gives an assessment of the importance, significance, and wide impact of a
country’s aggregate research contributions (Hirsch, 2005). The index h is defined as the
number of papers of a given author with a number of citations equal or greater than h (Ferrara
& Romero, 2013). Discounted h-index (dh-index) is a measure based on h-index to assess the
impact of academic research. This measure is devised to discount self-citations in the
computation of the impact of a given author or journal (Ferrara & Romero, 2013). The dh-
index value is calculated by applying the formula:
dh = h . /), where h = h-index,
C = Overall number of citations
SC = Number of self- citations
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Table 7: h-index & dh-index of Middle East countries
Country h-index dh-index
Scientific
Documents
LIS
Documents
Scientific
Documents
LIS
Documents
Israel 536 68 499.04 62.76
Turkey 296 29 257.47 26.55
Iran 199 25 157.54 21.51
Saudi Arabia 195 14 178.28 13.09
Egypt 184 16 164.88 15.61
Lebanon 138 9 131.12 8.52
UAE 130 12 123.04 11.28
Jordan 112 11 104.84 9.61
Kuwait 108 11 101.61 10.20
Oman 91 6 84.42 5.54
Qatar 86 7 80.46 6.55
Syrian Arab
Republic
81 4 76.41 4
Palestine 60 2 56.02 1.3
Iraq 59 1 55.08 1
Bahrain 55 5 52.33 4.89
Yemen 50 4 47.07 3.06
Table 7 shows the h-index and dh-index of Middle East countries. Israel has the highest h-
index in both scientific discipline documents (536) & LIS discipline documents (68) whereas
Yemen has the lowest h-index for scientific discipline documents (50) and Iraq has the lowest
h-index for LIS discipline documents (1). It is interesting to observe that for scientific
documents, h-index for Iran and Saudi Arabia was 199 and 195 respectively while dh-index
for both countries was 157.54 and 178.28 respectively which depicts that self-citations for
scientific documents of Iran are more than Saudi Arabia. Similarly Jordan and Kuwait, both
have equal h-index (11) for LIS documents whereas their dh-index is 9.61 and 10.2
respectively that shows self-citations for LIS documents is more in Jordan than Kuwait. The
h-index and dh-index for LIS documents are same for Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic
which shows that they do not have self-citations for their LIS documents which is practically
impossible.
5. Findings
Major findings of the present study are:
• Among the Middle East countries Iran, Israel and Turkey altogether contributed
72.53% of total scientific documents & 73.56% of total LIS documents. Kuwait has
shared maximum 0.67% of LIS documents to total scientific documents of the
country. LIS documents contribution to the total scientific documents of respective
countries was not found satisfactorily especially for top-ranked scientific documents
productive countries of the Middle East. On an average, LIS documents contribution
towards scientific documents of Middle East countries is only 0.22%.
• Among the Middle East countries Iran, Israel and Turkey altogether contributed
72.3% of total scientific citable documents & 73.67% of total LIS citable documents.
Kuwait has shared maximum 0.68% of LIS citable documents to total scientific
citable documents for the country. Except for Israel (0.43%), LIS citable documents
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contribution to the total scientific citable document is found below average for top
three scientific citable documents productive countries like Iran & Turkey. On an
average, LIS documents contribution towards scientific citable documents of Middle
East countries is only 0.22%.
• Israel has received 41.23% citations for total scientific documents & 67.28% citations
for LIS documents. Only Kuwait (0.39%) & Israel (0.44%) has more than the average
(0.27%) citation share of LIS documents to total scientific documents citations.
• Top three countries Israel, Turkey and Iran have shared 79.89% of total citations to
scientific documents of the Middle East countries while 87.7% citations shared for
LIS documents.
• Turkey has received the highest (30.47%) self-citations for total scientific documents
while for LIS documents the highest (64.16%) self-citations was received by Israel.
Yemen (1.11%) has the highest share of LIS documents self-citations to total
scientific documents self-citations for the country.
• The top 3 countries Turkey, Israel and Iran have shared 84.16% self-citations to total
scientific documents while 91.03% self-citations of LIS documents amongst Middle
East countries.
• In terms of citations per scientific documents, Israel has the highest citations per
scientific documents (19.7) followed by Syrian Arab Republic (9.33), Lebanon (8.96),
Kuwait (8.55) and Turkey (8.07) while Iraq has the lowest citations per scientific
documents (3.37).
• In terms of citations per LIS documents, Israel has the highest (21.01) citations per
LIS documents followed by Egypt (11.44), Turkey (9.61), Lebanon (7.17) and Yemen
(6.44) whereas Iraq has the lowest citations per LIS documents.
• In terms of self-citations per scientific documents, Israel has the highest self-citations
per scientific documents (2.62) followed by Iran (2.18) and Turkey (1.96) while Iraq
has the lowest self-citations per scientific documents (0.43).
• In terms of self-citations per LIS documents, Israel has the highest (3.1) self-citations
per LIS documents followed by Yemen (2.66) and Palestine (2) whereas Iraq and the
Syrian Arab Republic have the lowest (0) self-citations per LIS documents.
• RCI is found highest for Israel (2.04 for scientific documents & 1.78 for LIS
documents) and the lowest for Iraq (0.34 for scientific documents & 0.04 for LIS
documents).
• In terms of h-index & dh-index, Israel has the highest h-index (536) and dh-index
(499.04) for scientific documents followed by Turkey. Israel is again the highest in
terms of h-index (68) and dh-index (62.76) for LIS documents amongst Middle East
countries. The lowest h-index (50) and dh-index (47.07) observed for Yemen in terms
of scientific documents while for LIS documents Iraq was the lowest in terms of h-
index (1) and dh-index (1).
6. Conclusion
The scientific research is growing day by day due to the establishment of various agencies,
institutes, and research centers. The study analyzed the scientific research contributions of
Middle East countries which is one of the very much important regions of the Asian
continent. The share of LIS research towards scientific research of Middle East countries has
been analyzed and found very low contribution which can be declared insignificant in the
development of scientific growth of the Middle East. Amongst the Middle East countries,
Turkey, Israel and Iran were leading countries in many terms. Majority of the scientific
contribution has been shared by these top three countries which seem that the rest of the
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countries are for namesake only. The scientific research contribution of Iraq is the lowest
among Middle East countries. In LIS research, except Israel, rests of the countries have
shown very weak performance. For the scientific research growth of Middle East countries, a
serious initiative should be taken by the respective governments. With the development of
scientific research in other domains, LIS research domain should also be promoted by the
governments. Regional scientific growth cannot be represented by few countries rather every
country should take the positive initiative to boost up the scientific as well as LIS research.
7. Scope for Further Research
Further research is warranted to know the low research performance of Middle East countries
which deals with the factors affecting research performance. The study may also be
conducted to know the initiatives taken up by the governments. A study is warranted to know
the research journals published in the region to disseminate scientific research output and
whether they are indexed in leadings databases or not? Besides these, study may also be
conducted to know research interest of individual researchers in the region.
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