Evaluating the Research Productivity of Pakistan in the 21st Century

Abstract

The publications of scholarly communication have been considered as the driving force and the backbone for international development. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the scholarly research productivity by authors affiliated to Pakistan in all areas of knowledge. The Web of Science (WoS) database has been used to extract the records of publications produced by the authors affiliated to Pakistan and published during the 21st century from 2000 to 2019. The analysis of the retrieved documents has been conducted on the following parameters; distribution of publications by year, percentage, and annual growth rate; the top-20 most productive institutions, subject categories, collaborative countries, and preferred source publications. Findings have shown that 148,678 publications were produced by Pakistan with an average of 7,434 documents per year and 42% documents were produced during the last three years from 2017-19. COMSATS University Islamabad and Quaid-e-Azam University were found to be the most productive institutions while medicine general internal and engineering electrical electronic were found as the preferred areas of research. The examination of research showed that China is on the top, followed by United States and Saudi Arabia, but the highest citation impact in documents produced in collaboration with the authors are of Switzerland. Pakistan Journal of Botany has emerged as the most favorite source of publication. The state-of-the-art systematic research plays a significant role in the development of the country and is compulsory for sustainable developments. This study would help to re-examine the research strategies, support in the decision-making process, and further fund allocation. The result also highlights the strong and least preferred areas of research.