A Scientometric Analysis of Scholarly Literature on Radiological Sciences from Saudi Arabia over the Last Thirty Five Years (1985-2020)

Introduction: Scientometric analysis helps to measure the research growth and highlights the salient characteristics of the specific dataset. Saudi Arabia is rapidly growing country in the field of science and technology and remarkably contributing in the research productivity in all areas of health sciences, including radiological sciences from 1995 to 2000 and is drastically increased globally.

Aim: To analyse the credible literature on radiological sciences research from Saudi Arabia as reflected in the Scopus database.

Materials and Methods: This was a quantitative exploratory study based on scientometric analysis. The data was extracted from the Scopus database. The subject category of “radiology, nuclear medicine and imaging” was selected in the advanced search feature of the Scopus database. All the relevant scholarly literature consisted of articles and reviews indexed under the country name of Saudi Arabia published in English language from 1985 to 2020 were included for analysis.

Results: Saudi Arabia was ranked 33rd with 1,587 papers in radiological sciences, representing 0.43% of the global share. The slow progress was observed in the first 20 years but the remarkable growth was recorded during the last five years of study. King Saud University and King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre were the most contributing institutions. Saudi radiologists collaborated with 99 countries of the world and the United States was on the top. Four national journals were included in the list of top 10 preferred journals.

Conclusion: Although the rising tendency in radiological sciences research was evident during the last 10 years, still the share of Saudi Arabia was found much lower in comparison with the developed countries. Few well-established Institutions have taken lead in research productivity but a prioritised response from other Research Institutions is recommended.