A Bibliometric Study of Community Pharmacy-Based Research Activity in Middle Eastern Arab Countries: 2003 - 2012

Purpose: To analyze community pharmacy based research in Arab countries.
Methods: Comprehensive review of the literature indexed by Scopus was conducted. Data from Jan 01, 2003 till December 31, 2013 was searched for documents with specific words pertaining to “community pharmacy” in any one of the 13 Middle Eastern Arab countries. The quality of publication was assessed using h-index obtained from Scopus and Impact Factor (IF) obtained from Journal Citation Report (JCR).
Results: A total of 93 documents were retrieved with an h-index of 9. Thirty eight documents (40.9 %) were published in journals not listed in JCR and therefore had no IF. The sum of the IF of the 93 documents was 64.9 with a mean of 1.3 ± 2.01. The total number of citations was 338 with a mean of 3.6 ± 6.4 citations per document. The highest community pharmacy-based research was from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) (32.3 %) followed by United Arab Emirates (UAE) (17.2 %), Jordan (16.1 %), Kuwait (11.8 %) and Qatar (10.8 %). International cooperation was highest with Malaysia (9.7 %) followed by Pakistan (7.5 %), United Kingdom (UK) (8.6 %), and Australia (6.5 %).
Conclusion: The quantity and quality of community pharmacy-based research originating from Middle Eastern Arab countries was low. More effort is needed to bridge the gap in community pharmacy-based research and to promote better community pharmacy services in Middle Eastern Arab countries.