English abstract
The study aimed to identified the characteristics of published literature for faculty members at the Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman and King Abdulaziz University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Scopus database. Through this, it is possible to identify areas of strength and weakness and highlight the role of regulations and legislations in supporting scientific research at both universities. The study depended on comparative bibliometric method, represented in familiarizing in depth with characteristics of published literature for faculty members at these universities in terms of time and objective distribution, types and titles of information sources, volume and nature of authors' productivity and sponsor agencies for the published literature. The study also employed the qualitative method, represented in identifying the most influential authors in their objective fields through measuring impact factor in their specialized areas, as well as relying on analyzing documents, such as annual reports for Deanship of Scientific Research at both universities to acquire statistics, indicators and public spending on research and development. Data were processed and analyzed by Microsoft Excel. The study reached several findings that include: The number of indexing documents at the database for Sultan Qaboos University is 6023 whilst it is 10177 documents for King Abdulaziz University for the same period of time. Since 1996, rates of publishing began increasing for the two universities. The published literature of both universities distributed into 27 objective disciplines as scientific disciplines like medicine, engineering, biology and agriculture received the bulk share of published literature.
• Findings of the study at both universities, proved publishing compatibility in articles of scientific journals with Bradford Law of Scattering. The law relies on the existence of inverse relation between the number of journals in a certain topic field and the articles published in it, which was exactly achieved in the published literature that promulgated in both universities. The study's findings in the two universities also agree with Lotka Law for the volume of authors' published literature, The impact factor for faculty members at Sultan Qaboos University is higher by 5.5 than King Abdulaziz University 2.3, which means that the scientific value for authors is measured by their impact factor in their objective fields rather than the numbers of their scientific production. Through the presented findings, the researcher recommended the following: Urging faculty members at both universities on co-authoring with other researchers in external research institutions and centers to cement scientific communication and knowledge integrity between the university and community in a manner that serves the sustainable national development. Developing regulations and legislations at both universities to support and encourage scientific research particularly in the field of supporting reward of publishing and its variety, as well as supporting attendance in scientific conferences.
