Research productivity of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in science and social sciences

To investigate the research progress of Gulf Cooperation Council countries in science and social sciences.

This study was conducted in the Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from June 2014 to February 2015.All research documents related to the 1996-2013 period having an affiliation with Gulf Cooperation Council countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, were tracked. The main source for data-gathering was World Association of Universities, Sci-mago Journal and Country ranking and Web of Science Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Thomson Reuters.

Of the 544 institutions produced research papers, 141(25.92%) were universities or degree-awarding institutes, 372(68.38%) were research institutes and 31(5.7%) were Institute of Scientific Information-indexed scientific journals. The number of degree awarding institutes were 68(48.23%) in Saudi Arabia, 33(23.4%) in the United Arab Emirates and 12(8.51%) in Qatar. The total number of publications contributed by the region was 133638 (Mean ± SD: 22273 ± 26302.20); citable documents 127739 (Mean ± SD: 21289.83 ±25241.22); self-citations 105,716 (Mean ± SD: 17619.33 ± 23328.44); total citations 756141 (Mean ± SD: 126023.5 ± 143260.95) and citations per documents 33.22 (Mean ± SD: 5.53 ± 1.09).The overall and mean Hirschindex was 513and 85.5± 35.39.

Among Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Saudi Arabia was the most productive country producing adequate number of research publications, citations and holding the highest Hirsch index value.