Enhancing Research Visibility in the Gulf: How International Partnerships, Open Publishing, and Strategic Funding Drive Academic and Societal Impact

Author Information

Ahmed Shehata, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Mohamed Al-Saqri, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Metwaly Eldakar, Minia University, Egypt

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have invested heavily in knowledge-based economies. Research funding has been raised, international cooperation has been encouraged. This paper seeks to explore the influence of research funding, open access publishing and scholarly collaboration on both academic citation rates and public awareness of outputs from GCC countries. Altmetric Attention Scores and citation counts serve as indicators of research impact. An analysis is made of 523,817 papers published with GCC affiliations that are indexed in Scopus in the period 2015 - 2024. International collaboration was a common feature of all GCC countries. Qatar saw the greatest frequency, with totals ranging from 69.4 % (Kuwait) to 79 %. But the extent of the differences varied. Research that received funding, no matter how this was looked at, had an average citation rate consistently higher than unfunded studies. For example, in Bahrain, funded papers averaged 80.08 citations while unfunded ones averaged 13.14. The findings of this research show that international collaboration is the biggest factor influencing research impact in the GCC. Although the effects of financing in general are positively related to outcomes like awareness and citations rates, they show far greater variation based on specific factors. These patterns raise important questions about whether reliance on overseas research partners will be sustainable in the long term and suggest potential obstacles to securing support from within some fields of research.

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