Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of PubMed-Indexed Biomedical Publications in Oman from years 2005-2009

Research activities are promoted at the government and the institutional levels in Oman. However, the quantity and quality of research conducted in various institutes of Oman has not been measured. Therefore, this study was conducted to analyze the quantity and quality of biomedical publications emanating from Oman over the last five years (2005-2009).

Data regarding the biomedical publications of Omani origin published from January 2005 to December 2009 were retrieved from Pubmed. All abstracts were manually checked to exclude false retrievals. The journal impact factor (IF) for 2008 was applied for every publication. Full-length original articles, review articles and publications mentioning new research methods/new technique were assigned full IF of the journal. However, half of the journal IF were assigned to correspondences/commentaries, case reports/series and short communications.

Of biomedical publications, 752 were retrieved from Pubmed and 519 publications were included for final analysis after excluding false positives. The number of biomedical publications steadily increased over the last five years, but it was not statistically significant. Original research articles constituted more than half (54.3%) of all the publications, followed by case reports/series (30.1%). Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) contributed more than half of the biomedical publications (51.5%), followed by the Ministry of Health (MoH), which contributed 38% of the publications. Interestingly, the mean IF of the publications was not significantly different throughout the years.

The number of publications emanating from Oman increased over the last five years; however, the quality of research has not improved. Furthermore, the research in Oman is mainly conducted by the government-run institutions and there is hardly any contribution from the private institutions.