A bibliometric assessment of scientific productivity and international collaboration of the Islamic World in science and technology (S&T) areas

This case study analyzes scientific research landscape of the Islamic World in order to access the research productivity, scholarly impact and international collaborations across all Science and Technology (S&T) areas over the time period of 2000–2011, using the Scopus database. While Turkey is clearly leading among the Islamic countries, Iran takes 2nd rank in terms of publication output. All S&T subject areas show annual increase in publications by more than 10 %. The highest percentage of publications of the Islamic World falls into the area of Veterinary with respect to the world. Dentistry is the top area with 7 % share of the world’s top 25 % publications with respect to citation count. This undoubtedly shows that the impact of the scientific research of the Islamic World is very less as compared to the other developed nations. We also find that top collaborators of the Islamic World are mainly within Islamic countries. The findings of this case study provide an insight to the research landscape of the Islamic World and useful information to the scientific community as well as to the technology and innovation policy makers.