A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF PHYSICS PUBLICATIONS FROM MIDDLE-EASTERN COUNTRIES

I studied the publication efforts in physics in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jor dan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey in terms of a total number of 236 8 papers from these countries in international journals for 1990-1994. I looked for the national contributions, main subjects of activity, j ournal preferences of authors, and co-authorship patterns. Comparisons show that physicists from Egypt and Turkey combined, produced 75% of the total publication output. Half of the Egyptian papers went only to 16% of a set of 115 journals that publish papers from this country. S uch a high concentration of papers in a few journals was not the case for the rest of the countries. Condensed matter physics was found to b e among the three most active subjects for the countries except Iran. Iranian authors tended to be more active in astrosciences, and nuclear science and technology. I found a change in the publication patterns of the Middle Eastern physicists in the direction of decreasing isolat ion and increasing collaboration.