Obesity Researches Over the Past 24 years: A Scientometrics Study in Middle East Countries

Background: Researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers call for updated valid evidences to monitor, prevent, and control of alarming trends of obesity. We quantify the trends of obesity/overweight researches outputs of Middle East countries. Methods: We systematically searched Scopus database as the only sources for multidisciplinary citation reports, with the most coverage in health and biomedicine disciplines for all related obesity/overweight publications, from 1990 to 2013. These scientometrics analysis assessed the trends of scientific products, citations, and collaborative papers in Middle East countries. We also provided Information on top institutions, journals, and collaborative research centers in the field of obesity/overweight. Results: Over 24-year period, the number of obesity/overweight publications and related citations in Middle East countries had increasing trend. Globally, during 1990-2013, 415,126 papers have been published, from them, 3.56% were affiliated to Middle East countries. Iran with 26.27%, compare with other countries in the regions, after Turkey (47.94%) and Israel (35.25%), had the third position. Israel, Turkey, and Iran were leading countries in citation analysis. The most collaborative country with Middle East countries was USA and within the region, the most collaborative country was Saudi Arabia. Conclusions: Despite the ascending trends in research outputs, more efforts required for promotion of collaborative partnerships. Results could be useful for better health policy and more planned studies in this field. These findings also could be used for future complementary analysis.