Geography of Africa biomedical publications: An analysis of 1996–2005 PubMed papers

Uthman, Olalekan A.; Uthman, MB

doi:10.4314/ajfand.v8i2.19192

Cited by 10 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Libya did not appear in the top 20 African countries when the total number and the average annual number of biomedical publications were counted for each African country from 1996 to 2005. 8 Also, in the same study Libya was not ranked among the top 20 countries in Africa when the number of biomedical publications was normalized to annual publication rate per million inhabitants. 8 Libya ranked lower than Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen in total number of PubMed publications between 2002 and 2006.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…8 Also, in the same study Libya was not ranked among the top 20 countries in Africa when the number of biomedical publications was normalized to annual publication rate per million inhabitants. 8 Libya ranked lower than Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen in total number of PubMed publications between 2002 and 2006. 9 The same result was found when the data were normalized to gross domestic product (GDP).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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A negative trend of biomedical research in Libya: a bibliometric study

Benamer

Bredan

Bakoush

2009

Health Info Libraries J

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Background: It is well established that Libya is lagging behind its peers in biomedical research. The aim of this study is to analyse all the original biomedical publications affiliated with Libya from 1973 to 2007. Methods: PubMed and the Science Citation Index Expanded were searched for 'original research' biomedical studies affiliated with Libya. The generated data were hand searched and 329 'original research' studies were included in the analysis. Results: The first study was published in 1973. Publication rate peaked to an average of 15.2 studies per year during 1986-1996 and dropped to an average of 8.8 studies per year during 1997-2007. Of 166 first authors; 41% were Libyans and 59% were expatriates. The latter contributed 104 studies between 1986 and 1996 and 36 studies between 1997 and 2007, while the Libyans contributed 63 and 61 studies in the two respective periods. Authors affiliated with Benghazi produced 67% of the published studies, while authors from Tripoli produced 30% and other medical schools, hospitals and research centres from other Libyan cities produced only 3%. Conclusion: This study showed a decline in biomedical research publication in Libya. We propose that the lack of a research culture among the Libyan medical professionals is one of the factors contributing to this decline, which coincided with the departure of expatriate doctors from Libya. Raising awareness of the importance of research and improving research skills among Libyan medical professionals may help to reverse the current trend.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

A negative trend of biomedical research in Libya: a bibliometric study

Benamer

Bredan

Bakoush

2009

Health Info Libraries J

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“…The free access to PubMed and its friendly interface have led to the development of elaborate techniques to analyze global trends for biomedical research productivity and provide objective and useful tools to evaluate the results of scientific activity in different locations worldwide (7,(8)(9)(10). To the best of our knowledge, most of these studies required manual checks at the data collection phase for the quality of the data collected.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of an Eastern Mediterranean Region search strategy for biomedical citations indexed in PubMed

Tadmouri

Mandil

Rashidian

2017

East Mediterr Health J

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Mise au point d'une stratégie de recherche pour la Région de la Méditerranée orientale en matière de citations biomédicales indexées dans PubMed RÉSUMÉ PubMed, une base de données bibliographiques en libre accès, couvrant les disciplines des sciences biomédicales et de la santé, est utilisée avec succès pour identifier de nombreux indicateurs qui permettent d'analyser les tendances mondiales en matière de productivité de la recherche biomédicale. La présente étude constitue une tentative originale en vue de définir et d'optimiser une stratégie de recherche pour la Région de la Méditerranée orientale dans PubMed afin d'ouvrir la voie à des analyses descriptives ultérieures. Cette stratégie optimisée comporte des syntaxes complexes qui facilitent le contrôle du processus de recherche et assurent un juste équilibre entre la sensibilité et la précision des résultats obtenus. Les données de citation spécifiques à chaque pays ont été soumises à un examen manuel afin de repérer les fausses publications positives. Les résultats que nous avons obtenus indiquent que la productivité des publications a quasiment été multipliée par cinq dans la Région de la Méditerranée orientale entre 2004 et 2013. L'étude a montré que seuls cinq pays (la République islamique d'Iran, l'Égypte, l'Arabie saoudite, le Pakistan et la Tunisie ; par ordre de nombre de publications totales) ont contribué à 80 % de toutes les publications pour la Région de la Méditerranée orientale pendant cette période. La contribution de chacun des 17 pays restants de cette Région a été inférieure à 4 %. Nous pensons qu'il est possible d'utiliser la méthodologie présentée dans cette étude en association avec d'autres mesures afin de définir des indicateurs précieux permettant de décrire les systèmes de recherche en santé au sein de la Région de la Méditerranée orientale. ABSTRACT PubMed, a 'barrier-free' bibliographic database covering biomedical and health disciplines, has been successfully used to identify a multitude of indicators that assist in analyzing global trends for biomedical research productivity. The current study represents an original attempt to develop and optimize an Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) search strategy in PubMed to pave the way for subsequent descriptive analyses. The refined EMR search strategy contains elaborate syntaxes which facilitate controlling the search process and maintaining a proper balance between sensitivity and precision of the obtained results. Country-specific citation data were manually scanned for false positive publications. Our results indicate that publication productivity increased nearly five-fold in the EMR from 2004 to 2013. Five countries (Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Pakistan; in order of total publications) contributed to 80% of all EMR publications during this period. Each of the remaining 17 EMR countries contributed less than 4%. We believe that the methodology presented in this study can be used in conjunction with other metrics to extract invaluable indicators to descr...

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“…Tijssen (2007) asserted that peer-reviewed scholarly and professional journals are one of the very few internationally comparative sources of information on scientific outputs. Uthman and Uthman, (2007) stated that scholarly publications play an important role in scientific process by providing a key linkage between knowledge production and use. They are vital for knowledge sharing, dissemination of research findings and career advancement of academics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Africa lags behind other regions of the world in scientific research and needs large investment to catch up with other developing countries such as India and Brazil. However, South Africa has consistently produced more biomedical research output than other African countries (Uthman and Uthman, 2007;Tijssen, 2007;Hofman et al, 2009). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%