Development of an eastern mediterranean region search strategy for biomedical citations indexed in PubMed

ABSTRACT

PubMed, a 'barrier-free' bibliographic database covering biomedical and health disciplines, has been successfully used to identify a multitude of indicators that assist in analyzing global trends for biomedical research productivity. The current study represents an original attempt to develop and optimize an Eastern Mediterranean Region [EMR] search strategy in PubMed to pave the way for subsequent descriptive analyses. The refined EMR search strategy contains elaborate syntaxes which facilitate controlling the search process and maintaining a proper balance between sensitivity and precision of the obtained results. Country-specific citation data were manually scanned for false positive publications. Our results indicate that publication productivity increased nearly five-fold in the EMR from 2004 to 2013. Five countries [Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Pakistan; in order of total publications] contributed to 80% of all EMR publications during this period. Each of the remaining 17 EMR countries contributed less than 4%. We believe that the methodology presented in this study can be used in conjunction with other metrics to extract invaluable indicators to describe EMR health research systems