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

Between panic and motivation: did the first wave of COVID-19 affect scientific publishing in Mediterranean countries?

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that began in the winter of 2020, all communities and activities globally have been positively or negatively affected. This scientometric study raises an interesting question concerning whether the volume and characteristics of scientific publishing in all disciplines in 23 Mediterranean countries have been impacted by the pandemic and whether variations in the cumulative totals of COVID-19 cases have resulted in significant changes in this context. The Scopus database and SciVal tool supplied the necessary data for the years targeted for comparison (2019 and 2020), and the annual growth rates and differences were computed. The study used the Mann-Whitney test to examine the significance of the differences between the two years and the Spearman and Kendall correlation tests to evaluate the effect of the number of infections on these differences for all aspects of scientific performance. The findings demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic served as a powerful incentive, and the Mediterranean region experienced considerable differences in the volume and features of publications during this crisis. The most substantial implications were the significant growth from 3.1 to 9.4% in productivity and the increases in the annual growth rates of international collaboration, by 12% for the collaboration among Mediterranean countries and 10% for collaboration with the top ten epidemic countries. It was also proven that some characteristics of the publications were positively correlated with the total number of infections. This investigation can help university leaders and decision-makers in higher education and research institutions in these countries make decisions and implement measures to bridge the gaps and motivate researchers in all fields to conduct more research during this ongoing pandemic.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11192-022-04391-w.

Health research in the Syrian conflict: opportunities for equitable and multidisciplinary collaboration

There is considerable global momentum from Syrian researchers, policy makers and diaspora to address health, security and development challenges posed by almost a decade of armed conflict and complex geopolitics that has resulted in different areas of political control. However, research funders have been so far reluctant to invest in large-scale research programmes in severely conflict-affected areas such as northern Syria. This paper presents examples of collaborations and programmes that could change this through equitable partnerships between academic and operational humanitarian organizations involving local Syrian researchers—a tremendous way forward to capitalize and accelerate this global momentum.

Several academic and humanitarian organizations have initiated collaborations to build new networks and partnerships for better research and policy engagement in Syria. The networks conducted two consecutive annual conferences in 2019 and 2020. Key messages from these conference include: (1) equitable partnerships between organizations and individual researchers must form the basis of conducting better research; (2) ensuring the inclusion of local Syrian researchers is crucial in the development of any viable partnership; (3) capacity strengthening in health research is urgently needed in Syria’s current phase of active conflict to inform, develop and implement strengthened and sustainable health systems in the post-conflict phase.

Health-related articles on Syria before and after the start of armed conflict: a scoping review for The Lancet-American University of Beirut Commission on Syria

INTRODUCTION

Armed conflict may influence the size and scope of research in Arab countries. We aimed to assess the impact of the 2011 Syrian conflict on health articles about Syria published in indexed journals.

METHODS

We conducted a scoping review on Syrian health-related articles using seven electronic databases. We included clinical, biomedical, public health, or health system topics published between 1991 and 2017. We excluded animal studies and studies conducted on Syrian refugees. We used descriptive and social network analyses to assess the differences in rates, types, topics of articles, and authorship before and after 2011, the start of the Syrian conflict.

RESULTS

Of 1138 articles, 826 (72.6%) were published after 2011. Articles published after 2011 were less likely to be primary research; had a greater proportion reporting on mental health (4.6% vs. 10.0%), accidents and injuries (2.3% vs. 18.8%), and conflict and health (1.7% vs. 7.8%) (all p < 0.05); and a lower proportion reporting on child and maternal health (8.1 to 3.6%, p = 0.019). The proportion of research articles reporting no funding increased from 1.1 to 14.6% (p < 0.01). While international collaborations increased over time, the number of articles with no authors affiliated to Syrian institutions overtook those with at least one author affiliation to a Syrian institution for the first time in 2015.

CONCLUSION

To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the impact of armed conflict on health scholarship in Syria. The Syrian conflict was associated with a change in the rates, types, and topics of the health-related articles, and authors' affiliations. Our findings have implications for the prioritization of research funding, development of inclusive research collaborations, and promoting the ethics of conducting research in complex humanitarian settings.

Using the Quadruple Helix Model for evaluation of health science researches

Purpose

Altmetrics is a complementary method in scientometrics for evaluating the performance of individuals, organizations, institutions and countries in social media. Due to the large volume of data related to the interactions in science, technology and innovation, there is no choice but to develop and implement accurate models for analysis and decision making. The Quadruple Helix Model examines the scientific outcomes in four spaces of innovation, knowledge, consensus and government with a distinctive attention to the “innovation space”. In other words, it aims to find the connection between the academic space and other sectors of a society (public, media and government) to see if scientific outputs respond appropriately to their needs.

Design/methodology/approach

The present paper studied the impact of health-related researches in D8 countries) including Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Nigeria) using the Altmetrics scores of their indexed journal in the Web of Science (WOS). The results demonstrated distribution of interactions of the mentioned four spaces in health science researches in terms of social media, geographical distribution and theme for D8 countries. This was conducted using content analysis, scientometric and altmetric indicators in the WOS and Altmetrics.com databases.

Findings

In D8 countries, more interaction has taken place in the knowledge and innovation spaces; however, there exist Quadruple imbalances in these countries. Moreover, some interactions have been observed in all social networks, displaying that users consider health topics in D8 countries, and clinical sciences has gotten more interaction in all the four spaces.

Originality/value

The application of this model using altmetrics data with current approach has been conducted for the first time.

The role of Egyptian State Awards in changing researchers’ performance in the science and technology sector

Egyptians generally pay attention to the State Awards as the most prestigious awards that Egyptian researchers can receive, including the Nile Award, the State Appreciation Award, the State Award of Excellence, and the State Encouragement Award. The current study is an attempt to investigate the role of national awards in the scientific research system, in order to identify the characteristics of Egyptian State Award laureates in science and technology during 2012–5, to determine their international literature, and to explore the implications of receiving a national award using bibliometric indicators. Scopus database was used to extract data, and the statistical software package SPSS was used to analyze. The study sample was 212 laureates, in addition to the control group of 184 researchers who closely matches the academic profiles of the laureates. The performance of the laureates and the control group was compared before and after the award by using four bibliometric indicators and the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test. The laureates produced 13,598 publications from 1958 to 2018. Most of the laureates’ literature (94.35%) were published with coauthors. The Egyptian State Award laureates often collaborate with their Saudi Arabian and American colleagues, more than others. The average values of publications, citations, and citations per publication have increased after receipt of the award, unlike the h-index. Results indicated that receiving the State Award has a negative impact on the laureates’ performance.

Methods and Practices for Institutional Benchmarking based on Research Impact and Competitiveness: A Case Study of ShanghaiTech University

Purpose

To develop and test a mission-oriented and multi-dimensional benchmarking method for a small scale university aiming for internationally first-class basic research.

Design/methodology/approach

An individualized evidence-based assessment scheme was employed to benchmark ShanghaiTech University against selected top research institutions, focusing on research impact and competitiveness at the institutional and disciplinary levels. Topic maps opposing ShanghaiTech and corresponding top institutions were produced for the main research disciplines of ShanghaiTech. This provides opportunities for further exploration of strengths and weakness.

Findings

This study establishes a preliminary framework for assessing the mission of the university. It further provides assessment principles, assessment questions, and indicators. Analytical methods and data sources were tested and proved to be applicable and efficient.

Research limitations

To better fit the selective research focuses of this university, its schema of research disciplines needs to be re-organized and benchmarking targets should include disciplinary top institutions and not necessarily those universities leading overall rankings. Current reliance on research articles and certain databases may neglect important research output types.

Practical implications

This study provides a working framework and practical methods for mission-oriented, individual, and multi-dimensional benchmarking that ShanghaiTech decided to use for periodical assessments. It also offers a working reference for other institutions to adapt. Further needs are identified so that ShanghaiTech can tackle them for future benchmarking.

Originality/value

This is an effort to develop a mission-oriented, individually designed, systematically structured, and multi-dimensional assessment methodology which differs from often used composite indices.