J Korean Med Sci.  2021 May;36(21):e144. 10.3346/jkms.2021.36.e144.

Top Central Asian Educational Institutions on Publons: Analysis of Researchers and Reviewers

• Ahmed S
• Anirvan P

• KMID: 2516368
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2021.36.e144

Abstract

Background
The Publons platform provides integrated information on researchers, peer reviewers, publications and certain author metrics. Central Asia is a potentially growing region in terms of young researchers.
Methods
Using the inbuilt Publons search, the top institutes of nine countries of Central Asia and neighbours were identified and data on their reviewers, number of publications, number of peer reviews completed were extracted. These were compared with demographics of the countries such as population, gross domestic product, number of physicians and proportion of population enrolled for higher education.
Results
Amongst the top 15 institutes in Central Asia, China has claim to 12 while Kazakhstan has two and Iran has one. The number of top peer reviewers, number of verified reviews and Web of Science indexed publications from these top institutes varied directly with the number of researchers each had. Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are not performing well on most of these while China seems to be an outlier on the upper edge of the graphs. There is good correlation between the number of researchers in the top institutes per country and both number of publications and number of completed reviews. The number of total publications per top ten institutes of each country has high correlation with various demographic parameters like total population (Spearman rho, ρ = 0.85), gross domestic product (ρ = 0.82), total number of physicians (ρ =0.72), and number enrolled for higher education (ρ = 0.93).
Conclusion
There appears to be much disparity among the rankings, number of researchers, reviewers and published manuscripts across various countries in Central Asia. The gross heterogeneity of Central Asia needs to be minimized by nurturing and mentoring potentially upcoming researchers in publication, peer reviewing as well as in ethics involved.

Keyword

Central Asia; Peer Review; Publications; Publons; Publons Ranking; Universities

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Number of publications from the top 10 institutes per nation is proportional to the number of their reviewers, the countries being stratified by colour coding.

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  Fig. 2 Total number of peer reviews logged from the top 10 institution of each country is proportionate to the number of researchers per institute.

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