Malaysian biomedical and health sciences publications in the ISI database, 1990 to 2005: a bibliometric study

Abstract

The study adopts the bibliometric method to achieve the following objectives; (a) to analyze Malaysian publication contributions in the field of biomedicine and health sciences in terms of the total spread and main channels of research publications; (b) to identify the active authors involved and the pattern of authorship; (c) to determine publication productivity by Malaysian institutions; (d) to assess the pattern of research collaboration in this field; (e) to find out the subject coverage of researches undertaken, and (f) to ascertain the citations received by published Malaysian works. The sample comprises 3,697 publications by Malaysian authors indexed in the ISI Science Citation Index database from 1990 to 2005. The most productive period was during the 8MP and the trend line indicated a continuing upward trend. Journal articles (73.3%) were the main type of publication produced. More than half (63.7%) of authors (4,178) were onetime contributors. Fifteen authors were identified as the most productive producing an average of 2.7 papers each per year. The majority of publications were multi-authored (89.3%) works. The institutions of higher learning contributed 87 percent of the total publications. The most active institutions were Universiti Malaya (30.9%), Universiti Sains Malaysia (13.4%), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (12.7%), and Universiti Putra Malaysia (10.7%). A total number of 2,413 (63.5%) joint papers were identified and 47.4 percent were the result of international collaboration. Clinical Medicine is the most actively researched area. The spread of the journals that cover Malaysian publications corroborates with the Bradford’s Law of Scattering giving the ratio of 44: 152: 581 (core: moderate: peripheral journals). Most Malaysian articles were published in journals with an impact factor of less than 4. Overall, 2,254 Malaysian papers (60.97%) have been cited at least once over the period of study.