Scientific Productivity in the Library and Information Science Research Area in Middle Eastern Countries and What Should We Do Better?

The objective of the Middle East chapter(ME) of the Association for Information Science and Technology is to facilitate personal networking and professionalism in the ME region and other parts of the world. For this purpose, six Middle Eastern countries were randomly selected and analyzed with bibliometric methods for scientific productivity in the library and information science research area between 1979 and 2022. R programming language and Biliometrix Packages were used for the analysis. The relevant data were collected from the Web of Science on December 10, 2022. The productivity of ME countries in all document types was only 1.47%. Although academic productivity has increased considerably over the years, the contribution of Middle Eastern researchers to the global LIS literature remains very low and an emerging area for development. Six ME countries were randomly selected to assess their scientific production in the LIS field: Turkey(f:1,375), Iran(f:1,268), Kuwait(f:244), Egypt(f:232), Oman(f:164), and Iraq(f:48). The study is crucial to appreciate the general situation of the LIS field in a region containing cities that have hosted the largest libraries in history (such as Alexandria, Ephesus, and Pergamon). The Middle East has an important heritage for library and information science and this study’s findings open the discussion of how the region can perform better.