Middle East Countries’ Contribution to Global Engineering Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to examine the research output in engineering by the Middle East countries. The data on engineering research by Middle East countries were collected from Web of Science. Collected data were analyzed with various tools such as Average Annual Growth Rate (AAGR), Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), Activity Index (AI), and Relative Specialization Index (RSI). The level of regional and international cooperation in the Middle East countries was also identified. Findings showed Iran has the highest overall performance in total documents, total citations, h-index, and highly cited papers, but most of the publications by Yemen were international cooperation. Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Yemen in the field of petroleum engineering; Bahrain and Qatar in industrial engineering; Turkey in geological engineering; Syria in agricultural engineering; Lebanon in medical engineering; Israel in cell & tissue engineering; Iraq in civil engineering; Egypt in Chemical Engineering; and Jordan in Software Engineering have the highest RSI in their countries. Results show that Iran had the best performance in most of the indicators (quantitative indices) and Saudi Arabia has good performance in qualitative indices among Middle East countries

Keywords

• scientometrics
• research output
• engineering
• middle east countries