The study presents a comparative examination of the development process of scientific and technological research that has taken place in the Middle East, especially in the more advanced countries, and in Israel. The data presented are based on two main indices: the number of publications and the average citations per publication.
The data indicate that the following processes have occurred during recent years:
- Significant and rapid progress of Iran and Turkey in many areas, relative to moderate progress (and sometimes, regression) of Israel in the same areas.
- The narrowing gaps between Israel, Iran and Turkey that are expressed initially in the number of publications, and later in the index of average citations of an article.
- Israel leads in most of the examined areas; however, Iran and Turkey have already surpassed Israel in some areas in the number of publications, and in a few areas even in the average citations of an article.
