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Mapping Health Research Involving Human Subjects in Saudi Arabia: A text mining and topic modeling analysis.
1Department of Pharmacy Practice, College of Clinical Pharmacy, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Medical Journal
|June 4, 2026
Summary
Saudi Arabia
Area of Science:
- Health Research
- Saudi Arabia
- Bibliometrics
Background:
- Saudi Arabia's health research landscape is expanding.
- Understanding research trends is crucial for strategic development.
Purpose of the Study:
- Identify dominant and underrepresented research topics.
- Classify health studies by design and data sources.
- Analyze health research from Saudi Arabia.
Main Methods:
- Retrospective analysis of PubMed-indexed articles (1959-2025).
- Text mining to identify human subject studies.
- Topic modeling (non-negative matrix factorization) for theme identification.
Main Results:
- 18,239 human subject studies identified.
- Cross-sectional designs (57.7%) most common; clinical trials (1.4%) least common.
- Inpatient care and clinical outcomes (19.5%) most prominent topic; asthma (1.3%) least prominent.
Conclusions:
- Clinical trials in Saudi Arabia are limited.
- Need to promote interventional research and infrastructure.
- Topic modeling can guide research priorities and national health needs.
