Arab institutions’ researchers contributions to information and library science international publishing

Abstract EN

This study aims to evaluate the Arab institutions’ researchers contributions to the international scientific publishing in the field of the information science and library science indexed in the Web of Science™ Core Collection, to provide an overview of their research activity and identify the significant aspects of these contributions, in this study Arab Institutions’ Researchers are meant by any researcher belonging to an Arab institution even if he has not Arab nationality.

Methods – Data of articles from all the Arab countries except Palestine were obtained from Web of Science™ the Core Collection which provides coverage until 1900.

The data were retrieved on October 6th 2016, then imported to excel to apply sort, filtration, statistical methods and graphs.

Results – During the time span of 114 years (1900-2014), 584 of articles were published.

There was not any publishing effort during 1900-1950.

The first article from all Arab institutions’ researchers appeared in 1952 by Badr El Dib in (library journal) entitled “Report from Egypt”.

The first article from the top ten researchers appeared in 1981.

Nine of the top ten productive authors were male and just one female who is Charlene L.

Al-Qallaf.

Sajjad Ur Rehman held the first rank as the most productive author.

Pakistani authors were found as majority with 5 authors at the top productive authors.

278 articles (48%) were written by one author while 306 of articles (52%) were co-authored.

Journal of Information Science with ISSN 0165-5515 issued by Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and published by Sage was the Top journal that Arab institutions’ researchers were interested to publish on it.

Saudi Arabia holds the first rank as the most productive country.

Articles were written in two languages: English and French.

Articles in English were 576 (98.6 %) and 8 in French (1.4 %).

Conclusion - the Arab institutions’ researchers contributions to the international scientific publishing in the field of the information science & library science increase rapidly.

Most of the Arab contributions are made by foreign researchers and this should be a temporary state.

Arab universities should take the appropriate decisions to enhance their researchers’ international publishing skills.

And this may be a starting point for a new study.