Biomedical research in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (1982-2000)

Because of the leading position of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in biomedical research among the Arab States, we aimed this study at providing a detailed analysis of the development of this domain in the Kingdom.

More than 1500 queries were mainly directed to the PubMed bibliographic database. Tags, boolean operators, and wild cards were utilized.

Most of the Saudi biomedical citations originated from the capital city of Riyadh (70%), particularly from the King Saud University (29.5%) and King Faisal Specialist Hospital (21.5%). One of every 5 Saudi papers either describes a disease, a blood related analysis, or surgical observations. Only 0.5% of Saudi papers appear in the 200 highest impact-factor journals.

A steady advancement in biomedical research is observed in the Kingdom mainly in years 1987-1996. The absence of uniformity in writing the addresses of authors in published articles from Saudi Arabia results in misleading data about the geographical distribution of biomedical research and sometimes improper rating of the scientific institutions in the Kingdom. The most dynamic biomedical fields in the Kingdom observed in the present analysis are Hematology, Surgery, Cancer, Pharmacology, and Microbiology. The main reasons behind the small number of Saudi papers appearing in high impact-factor journals are the bias and the economics of scientific publishing. We hope that the present study will lay the foundation for more detailed investigations on the directions of biomedical research in the Kingdom and will be of great importance to better found future strategies in this important realm.