title: Publications indexed in Medline and Embase originating from the Syrian Arab Republic: a survey.
abstract: Health research in the Syrian Arab Republic faces many difficulties, including limited funds, infrastructure and means of dissemination. In a search of Medline and Embase databases in March 2006 we extracted data on 386 biomedical papers originating from the Syrian Arab Republic. Embase had the superior coverage. A total of 64% were published in journals from Europe, 22% from North American journals and 12% in periodicals from the Middle East. Output of papers increased by 1.4 articles/year since 1979. The topics of 57% of papers were biomedical, with the remainder being pure science or agricultural/veterinarian issues. Dentistry, public health and surgery were the commonest subjects of the biomedical papers. Funding was largely from government.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, University of Damascus, Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic.
authors.forename: H E
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Matar
authors.forename: M Q
authors.initials: MQ
authors.lastname: Almerie
authors.forename: C E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Adams
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Essali
mesh_terms: D000043:Abstracting and Indexing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015706:Bibliometrics; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005060:Europe; D006801:Humans; D016239:MEDLINE / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008877:Middle East; D009656:North America; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012106:Research / Q000458:organization & administration; D012109:Research Support as Topic / Q000458:organization & administration; D013593:Syria