Publications indexed in Medline and Embase originating from the Syrian Arab Republic: a survey

Health research in the Syrian Arab Republic faces many difficulties, including limited funds, infrastructure and means of dissemination. In a search of Medline and Embase databases in March 2006 we extracted data on 386 biomedical papers originating from the Syrian Arab Republic. Embase had the superior coverage. A total of 64% were published in journals from Europe, 22% from North American journals and 12% in periodicals from the Middle East. Output of papers increased by 1.4 articles/year since 1979. The topics of 57% of papers were biomedical, with the remainder being pure science or agricultural/veterinarian issues. Dentistry, public health and surgery were the commonest subjects of the biomedical papers. Funding was largely from government.