Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
Background: The research growth has directly linked with higher education and the number of researchers in the society. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the research productivity, the status of higher education and the estimation of scientists in the members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
Method: The data for this retrospective study has been taken from open access online sources. The records of research productivity and the number of journals & other source publications have been downloaded from SCImage Journal and Country Rank (SJR). Times Higher Education (THE) world university ranking 2020 has been used to find out the quality universities in OIC countries and data on the number of researchers per million people has been obtained from the World Bank.
Results: A total of 39,46,933 documents published worldwide in the year 2018 as reflected in SJR, the share 57 OIC member countries have been 3,27,555 (8.29%). Iran and Turkey have been on the top with 60,268 (1.52%) and 45,582; (1.15%) publications respectively. There are 31,917 source publications are indexed in SJR in 2018, United States (US) has been on the top with 11,809 (36.99%) source publications. There are 1,087 (3.41%) source publications associated with OIC member countries. There are 1,396 universities of 92 countries are listed in the THE world university ranking 2020. Among the top 500 universities in the world, OIC members have 14 universities whereas a total of 179 universities are included by the Muslim world. UAE has the maximum number of scientists (n=2407) in one million people. The comparison of present data with similar previous studies showed that the growing tendency of publications found among the OIC countries.
Conclusion: The OIC member countries has been increasing the allocation for research and development (R & D) and enhancing the collaborative research activities within and outside of the OIC countries. There is a need to hire the veteran editors for scientific journals to improve the quality of publications and getting recognized by credible databases.