A Survey on Hot Papers of Middle-East Countries in Database of Essential Science Indicators (ESI)

The current study has been performed with the purpose of investigating hot papers of Middle-East countries in database of Essential Science Indicators (ESI). Number of hot papers of each country was identified and the result showed that among 19 countries located in middle-east region only 9 of them have hot papers, and Turkey has been assigned the first rank in this region regarding the number of hot papers (27 hot papers, 48.21%). Hot papers of these 9 countries were scrutinized concerning number of citations, their scopes, publication strategies that countries have applied with the aim of publishing their papers, co-authorship patterns as well as regional and international collaborations. The obtained results revealed that the average number of citations of each paper was in the range of 13 – 73. The main scope of papers is engineering and the next scopes were chemistry and clinical medicine. Regarding the publication strategies applied by the countries in publishing the hot papers, our findings indicated that most of these papers have been published in American and British journals with relatively high impact factors, in the range of 5.0 – 53. Most of the countries in the region have had collaboration with each other in production of their hot papers. Furthermore, most of these hot papers have been accomplished through collaboration of several countries at international level.