Status of research publications in various science subjects among Muslim countries (1996-2010)

This study aimed to compare the bibliometric indicators, including total number of documents, citable documents, citations per document and H-index in various science subjects among Muslim Majority countries (MMC) and the rest of the world during the period 1996-2010. We selected 193 listed member countries of the United Nations according to the proportions of the population who are MMC to the remaining portion named as the Rest of the World Countries (RWC). Fifty seven countries were classified as MMC while the remaining 133 were RWC. The bibliometric data for various science subjects for individual countries was mainly collected from the SCI-mago and Web of Science. The total number of documents in science subjects published from all over MMC during the period 1996-2010 was 16,074.18 +/- 5,411.4; citable documents 15,504.6 +/- 5,174.8; citations per document 7.65 +/- 0.48 and the H-index 54.91 +/- 4.80. However, the number of documents in various science subjects from the RWC during the same period was 150,044.99 +/- 43,800.29; citable documents were 142,721.70 +/- 41,233.66; citations per document were 11.76 +/- 10.37 and the mean H-Index was 135.61 +/- 14.73. All these indicators were significantly low (p = 0.0001) in MMC compared to the RWC. The total number of research publications, citable documents, citations per document and H-index for Medicine, Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry, Mathematics, Engineering and Computer Sciences were significantly low in MMC compared to the RWC, respectively.