Israel clearly dominates the entire region. It produced about 62% (some 19,000 of 30,700) of all Middle Eastern science articles indexed on SciSearch since 1987. The next biggest producer has been Egypt, with a 15% share, followed by Saudi Arabia with 10%, Kuwait with 4%, Iraq with 3%, and Jordan with a 2% share. All other countries contrib uted 1% or less of all Middle Eastern papers.
In this group, Kuwait is perhaps the big surprise. The tiny nation has published about 1,200 papers in SciSearch-indexed journals over, the last three years—almost half as many as the relative giant Saudi Arabia.
Each of the big three producers— Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—exhibits different strengths. Israel is particularly strong in clinical medicine and biomedical research; it also produces a relatively large number of math and computer science papers (about a 4% world share). Egypt’s chief focus is chemistry and chemical engineering, ...
