A Bibliometric Analysis of Pharmaceutical Sciences-Related Articles in Qatar from 2013-2020

Backgrround: Pharmaceutical science is an important area in drug discovery and therapies.The research output generated from pharmaceutical sciences research is critical for psychological, physical, and social wellbeing.

This study was carried out to analyze Qatar's quantity and quality of pharmaceutical sciences-related research and map out a national research roadmap and priority areas.

Materials and Methods: A systematic search was carried out in the Web of Science, Scopus, Pub Med, and Google Scholar databases using the search terms “Pharmaceutical Science,” “Pharmaceutical Chemistry,” “Medicinal Chemistry,” “Pharmacology,” “Pharmaceutics,” “Pharmacokinetics,” “Physiology,” “Pharmaceutical Science research,” “Study,” other relevant terms related to Pharmaceutical Sciences field and “Qatar.”The search covered eight years. The data extracted included the title, keywords, publication date, authors, publishing journal, journal ranking, impact factor, type of article, number of citations, the sum of citations, H-index, etc.

Results: The search yielded123 studies. Most were original articles (n=100, 81.3%), published in 2019 (n=27, 22.0%), applied research (n=68, 55.3%),indexed in Web of Science (n=120, 97.6%),published under the subject of pharmacology (n=43, 42.6%), focused on cancer (n=46, 37.4%)and produced by five authors (n=19, 18.8%) and more than eight authors (n=19, 18.8%). Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) was the main collaborator (n=16, 13.0%). Fifty-four (43.9%) of the articles were published in journals ranked as Q1.

Conclusions: A total of 123 articles were published, with an average annual growth rate of 6.7% in publications and 946 citations. A high number of publications were in Q1 and Q2 journals. The research focus (e.g., cancer and cardiovascular) was established according to the country’s research roadmap and priority areas.