Scarcity of Publications from Arab Countries in One of the Q1 Orthopedic Journals, Is It Us or the Journal?

Abstract

Objective: Through the journey of getting our research article published, we thought about submitting it to the Bone and Joint Journal as one of the Q1 orthopedic journals, but before doing so, we thought about the chances of being rejected. Hence, we decided to find out how often research articles have been published from our geographical area (Arab countries). The aim of this study was to detect the contribution of Arab countries’ research work in this journal. Methods: We examined all the publications by this journal over 5 years starting from January 2014 to December 2018, to find how many publications came from the Arab countries. Results: We found that among the examined 1161 articles, only 6 articles had an author or more from an Arab country. However, only one article was totally from an Arab country, and the remaining five had an author affiliated to an Arabic institution. Conclusions: There is an obvious deficiency of publications coming from Arab countries in the Bone and Joint journal as an example of the Q1 orthopedic journals. We believe that a strategy for improving the research quality as well as quantity coming from our area should be discussed and adopted by national orthopedic associations.