Assessing the Scientific Research Productivity of the Palestinian Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

An-Najah National University (ANNU) is a Palestinian university that was established more than 35 years ago. The objective of this study was to do a bibliometric assessment of research output, which describes the growth, contribution, and impact of research carried out by the faculty members, researchers, or students of ANNU in the past 35 years. The data used for this study were retrieved from Scopus database. Bibliometric analysis was used to identify the pattern of publication, relative growth rate, authorship pattern, collaborative measures, author’s productivity, most prolific authors, and most prolific journals. A total of 791 published documents were retrieved for ANNU. Seventeen documents (2.1%) were published in Acta Crystallographica Section E Structure Reports Online, whereas 16 (2.0%) were published in Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part A: Environmental Science and Engineering, and 10 (1.3%) were published in International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Six hundred one (76%) documents were published in journals listed in Web of Knowledge. The total number of citations for documents published from ANNU, at the time of data analysis (November 19, 2013), was 4,553, with an average of 5.8 citations per document. The study identified 384 (25.8%) documents with 59 countries as ANNU–foreign collaborators. Research output from ANNU showed steady growth over the past 35 years. Research output was high from certain scientific disciplines, whereas was lagging from others. Future emphasis on joint research, international collaboration, and publishing in indexed journals is needed.