A Scopus-based examination of tobacco use publications in Middle Eastern Arab countries during the period 2003–2012

Harm Reduction Journal

Rahmat Awang¹  Waleed M Sweileh³  Samah W Al-Jabi²  Sa'ed H Zyoud¹ 

[1] WHO Collaborating Centre for Drug Information, National Poison Centre, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang 11800, Malaysia;Department of Clinical and Community Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus 44839, Palestine;Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus 44839, Palestine

关键词: Scopus;    Middle Eastern Arab;    Tobacco smoking;    Bibliometric;   

Others  :  809670
DOI  :  10.1186/1477-7517-11-14

 received in 2014-02-27, accepted in 2014-04-10,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Tobacco smoking is the main health-care problem in the world. Evaluation of scientific output in the field of tobacco use has been poorly explored in Middle Eastern Arab (MEA) countries to date, and there are few internationally published reports on research activity in tobacco use. The main objectives of this study were to analyse the research output originating from 13 MEA countries on tobacco fields and to examine the authorship pattern and the citations retrieved from the Scopus database.

Methods

Data from 1 January 2003 through 31 December 2012 were searched for documents with specific words regarding the tobacco field as 'keywords’ in the title in any 1 of the 13 MEA countries. Research productivity was evaluated based on a methodology developed and used in other bibliometric studies.

Results

Five hundred documents were retrieved from 320 peer-reviewed journals. The greatest amount of research activity was from Egypt (25.4%), followed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) (23.2%), Lebanon (16.3%), and Jordan (14.8%). The total number of citations for the 560 documents, at the time of data analysis (27 August 2013), was 5,585, with a mean ± SD of 9.95 ± 22.64 and a median (interquartile range) of 3(1–10). The h-index of the retrieved documents was 34. This study identified 232 (41.4%) documents from 53 countries in MEA-foreign country collaborations. By region, MEA collaborated most often with countries in the Americas (29.6%), followed by countries in the same MEA region (13.4%), especially KSA and Egypt.

Conclusions

The present data reveal a promising rise and a good start for research productivity in the tobacco field in the Arab world. Research output is low in some countries, which can be improved by investing in more international and national collaborative research projects in the field of tobacco.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Zyoud et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 参考文献 】

• [1]World Health Organization: WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2011: warning about the dangers of tobacco. [http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789240687813_eng.pdf webcite]
• [2]de Granda-Orive JI, Alonso-Arroyo A, Roig-Vazquez F: Which data base should we use for our literature analysis? Web of Science versus SCOPUS. Arch Bronconeumol 2011, 47:213.
• [3]de Granda-Orive JI, Villanueva-Serrano S, Aleixandre-Benavent R, Valderrama-Zurián JC, Alonso-Arroyo A, García Río F, Jiménez Ruiz CA, Solano Reina S, González Alcaide G: Network of international scientific collaboration on smoking: analysis of coauthorship through the Science Citation Index 1999–2003. Gac Sanit 2009, 23(222):e234-e243.
• [4]Afifi M: Egyptian biomedical publications in PubMed, 1996–2005. J Egypt Public Health Assoc 2007, 82:91-104.
• [5]Benamer HT, Bredan A, Bakoush O: Scientific publication productivity of Libyan medical schools: a bibliometric study of papers listed in PubMed, 1988–2007. Educ Health 2009, 22:310.
• [6]Bissar-Tadmouri N, Tadmouri GO: Bibliometric analyses of biomedical research outputs in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates 1988–2007. Saudi Med J 2009, 30:130-139.
• [7]Diab MM, Taftaf RM, Arabi M: Research productivity in Syria: quantitative and qualitative analysis of current status. Avicenna J Med 2011, 1:4-7.
• [8]Sweileh WM, Zyoud SH, Sawalha AF, Abu-Taha A, Hussein A, Al-Jabi SW: Medical and biomedical research productivity from Palestine 2002–2011. BMC Res Notes 2013, 6:41. BioMed Central Full Text
• [9]Tadmouri GO, Tadmouri NB: Biomedical research in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 1982–2000. Saudi Med J 2002, 23:20-24.
• [10]Garcia-Lopez JA: Bibliometric analysis of Spanish scientific publications on tobacco use during the period 1970–1996. Eur J Epidemiol 1999, 15:23-28.
• [11]Cohen JE, Chaiton MO, Planinac LC: Taking stock a bibliometric analysis of the focus of tobacco research from the 1980s to the 2000s. Am J Prev Med 2010, 39:352-356.
• [12]Warner KE, Tam J, Koltun SM: Growth in tobacco control publications by authors from low- and middle-income countries. Tob Control 2014, 23:231-7.
• [13]Kira A, Glover M, Bullen C, Viehbeck S: Publications as an indicator of increased tobacco control research productivity (quantity and quality) in New Zealand. Nicotine Tob Res 2011, 13:474-478.
• [14]Nykiforuk CI, Osler GE, Viehbeck S: The evolution of smoke-free spaces policy literature: a bibliometric analysis. Health Policy 2010, 97:1-7.
• [15]Lin JY, Rosenblatt D: Shifting patterns of economic growth and rethinking development. J Econ Policy Reform 2012, 15:171-194.
• [16]Wallin JA: Bibliometric methods: pitfalls and possibilities. Basic Clin Pharmacol Toxicol 2005, 97:261-275.
• [17]Smith DR, Hazelton M: Bibliometrics, citation indexing, and the journals of nursing. Nurs Health Sci 2008, 10:260-265.
• [18]Smith DR: Impact factors, scientometrics and the history of citation-based research. Scientometrics 2012, 92:419-427.
• [19]De Battisti F, Salini S: Robust analysis of bibliometric data. Stat Methods Appl 2013, 22:269-283.
• [20]Smith K, Marinova D: Use of bibliometric modelling for policy making. Math Comput Simul 2005, 69:177-187.
• [21]Scopus: SciVerse Scopus fact sheet. SciVerse® Scopus [http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/scopus webcite]
• [22]Zyoud SH, Al-Jabi SW, Sweileh WM, Awang R: Assessing the scientific research productivity of a leading toxicology journal: a case study of Human & Experimental Toxicology from 2003 to 2012. SAGE Open Med 2014, 2:2050312114523424.
• [23]Zyoud SH, Al-Jabi SW, Sweileh WM: Worldwide research productivity of paracetamol (acetaminophen) poisoning: a bibliometric analysis (2003–2012). Hum Exp Toxicol 2014. Article in press
• [24]Zyoud SH, Al-Jabi SW, Sweileh WM, Awang R: A bibliometric analysis of toxicology research productivity in Middle Eastern Arab countries during a 10-year period 2003–2012. Health Res Policy Syst 2014, 12:4. BioMed Central Full Text
• [25]Zyoud SH, Al-Jabi SW, Sweileh WM, Awang R: A bibliometric analysis of research productivity of Malaysian publications in leading toxicology journals during a 10-year period 2003–2012. Hum Exp Toxicol 2014. Article in press
• [26]Falagas ME, Pitsouni EI, Malietzis GA, Pappas G: Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar: strengths and weaknesses. FASEB J 2008, 22:338-342.
• [27]Hirsch JE: An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2005, 102:16569-16572.
• [28]Meho LI, Rogers Y: Citation counting, citation ranking, and h‒index of human‒computer interaction researchers: a comparison of Scopus and Web of Science. J Am Soc Inf Sci Technol 2008, 59:1711-1726.
• [29]Smith DR: Identifying a set of 'core’journals in occupational health, part 2: lists derived by bibliometric techniques. Arch Environ Occup Health 2010, 65:173-175.
• [30]SCImago Journal Rank [http://www.scimagojr.com/SCImagoJournalRank.pdf webcite]
• [31]Maziak W, Nakkash R, Bahelah R, Husseini A, Fanous N, Eissenberg T: Tobacco in the Arab world: old and new epidemics amidst policy paralysis. Health Policy Plan 2013. Article in press
• [32]Kulkarni AV, Aziz B, Shams I, Busse JW: Comparisons of citations in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar for articles published in general medical journals. JAMA 2009, 302:1092-1096.
• [33]Smith DR: Highly cited articles in environmental and occupational health, 1919–1960. Arch Environ Occup Health 2009, 64(Suppl 1):32-42.
• [34]Harzing A-W, Van der Wal R: Google Scholar: the democratization of citation analysis.Ethics in Science and. Environ Politics 2007, 8:61-73.
• [35]Mehta M: The Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group.J. Evid Based Med 2013, 6:213-215.
• [36]Delirrad M, Rashidi A, Karimi S: A bibliometric analysis of toxicology publications of Iran and Turkey in ISI Web of Science. Iran J Toxicol 2013, 6:735-745.
• [37]Miro O, Montori E, Ramos X, Galicia M, Nogue S: Trends in research activity in toxicology and by toxicologists in seven European countries. Toxicol Lett 2009, 189:1-4.
• [38]Smith DR, Zhang X, Zheng Y, Wang RS: Tobacco use among public health professionals in Beijing: the relationship between smoking and education level. Aust N Z J Public Health 2005, 29:488-489.
• [39]Jitnarin N, Kosulwat V, Rojroongwasinkul N, Boonpraderm A, Haddock CK, Poston WS: Socioeconomic status and smoking among Thai adults: results of the National Thai Food Consumption Survey. Asia Pac J Public Health 2011, 23:672-681.
• [40]Dawson AH: Comment on editorial; best research for low income countries. Asia Pac J Med Toxicol 2013, 2:76.
• [41]Figg WD, Dunn L, Liewehr DJ, Steinberg SM, Thurman PW, Barrett JC, Birkinshaw J: Scientific collaboration results in higher citation rates of published articles. Pharmacotherapy 2006, 26:759-767.
• [42]Abramo G, D'Angelo CA, Di Costa F: Research collaboration and productivity: is there correlation? High Educ 2009, 57:155-171.
• [43]Lee S, Bozeman B: The impact of research collaboration on scientific productivity. Soc Stud Sci 2005, 35:673-702.
• [44]Kusma B, Scutaru C, Quarcoo D, Welte T, Fischer TC, Groneberg-Kloft B: Tobacco control: visualisation of research activity using density-equalizing mapping and scientometric benchmarking procedures. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2009, 6:1856-1869.
• [45]Zainal H, Zainab AN: Biomedical and health sciences publication productivity from Malaysia. Health Inf Libr J 2011, 28:216-225.