An-Najah Staff

Preferred Abstract (Original):  Palestine is a small newly established state in the Middle East. The objective of this study was to assess the quantity and quality of research output from Palestine after Oslo peace accords. The data used for this study were retrieved from Scopus database (officially known as Sciverse Scopus). Bibliometric analysis was used to identify the pattern of publication, relative growth rate, authorship pattern, collaborative measures, author's productivity, most prolific authors, and most prolific journals. A total of 3,585 published documents were retrieved from Palestine. A steady increase was observed after 2001. The h-index of the retrieved documents was 57. Fifty-three (1.48%) documents were published in Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, whereas 52 (1.45%) and 49 (1.37%) documents were published in Journal of Dispersion Science and Technology and Asian Journal of Chemistry, respectively. Half of the top 20 journals in which Palestinian researchers had published their articles were un-indexed in Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) web of knowledge. The highest number of documents published by a Palestinian researcher was 79. The main subject area of published documents from Palestine was medicine (717; 20.00%), followed by chemistry (551, 15.37%), and engineering (530, 14.78%). The top countries involved in research collaboration with Palestine were the United States (422, 11.70%), followed by Germany (381; 10.71%), and the United Kingdom (208; 5.83%). There was a significant correlation between number of collaborating countries with Palestine in one hand, and quantity and quality of research activity in Palestine on the other hand. The number of collaborating countries with Palestine increased almost ten-fold from 1995 to 2012. Research output from Palestine showed steady growth since the Oslo peace accords. Research output was high from certain scientific disciplines while was lagging from others. Future emphasis on joint research, international collaboration, and publishing in indexed journals is needed.