Ahmed - I would argue that this is not just exclusive to the Arabic literature. I believe that at least one of the reasons for what you are describing is to do with 'standard' filters/limiters with bibliographic search engines. One of the main 'default' limiters, when performing a critical literature search, is 'English-language only'. Many choose this option - either because it is their only spoken language and/or to keep the resulting keyword 'hit' numbers to a manageable level. Many journals try to overcome this (as this affects citation and impact) by having at least the abstract translated to English.

Ahmed - I would argue that this is not just exclusive to the Arabic literature. I believe that at least one of the reasons for what you are describing is to do with 'standard' filters/limiters with bibliographic search engines. One of the main 'default' limiters, when performing a critical literature search, is 'English-language only'. Many choose this option - either because it is their only spoken language and/or to keep the resulting keyword 'hit' numbers to a manageable level. Many journals try to overcome this (as this affects citation and impact) by having at least the abstract translated to English.

It is widespread out there but in specific fields though. Unfortunately, nowadays, most Arabic universities count only research studies published in English for faculty promotions, especially in the medical and scientific fields. Therefore, most faculty members are forced to publish in English. Language of sciene should bot be restricted to only one or two languages.

Dr-Ahmed M. Al-Baidhani- Thank you for your question. Research is about quality studies that move fields and disciplines forward and add new knowledge to our understanding. It is about building a scholarly culture of research where the different components of research are well established. Research is not about doing 4-5 papers to be promoted at the university. It is about a continuing contribution to scholarly activities related to research. These activities may include publishing research studies, contributing to conferences at local and international levels, and getting grants/funds. It is also about serving the profession as peer-reviewers and on editorial boards, teaching research, and supervising research students at different levels. Also, contributing to the research curriculum at your school, international collaborations, and many other scholarly activities.

The reason for this is due to the fact that most Arab scientific journals do not have an influence coefficient according to international scientific standards, and therefore we find that Arab researchers publish in foreign journals that have an impact coefficient which ensures their spread on the widest scientific scope.

Arab literature is scarce in relation to academic research, due to the lack of interest and the weak material and moral support that cannot be compared with what the developed countries provide to their researchers.

Thanks a lot, everybody, for your inputs and feedback which enriched the issue.

Academic studies on Arabic literature are not scarce as a matter of fact, but only a handful of them get published in academic journals. Most of the critical works undertaking Arabic literature are journalistic by nature, hence such articles, usually in the form of reviews and reports, find their way to newspapers and magazines rather than peer-reviewed journals. One reason why is that very few journals of an international and/or prestigious status publish articles in Arabic. These journals, usually based in non-Arabic countries, are overall very challenging venues to place one’s articles in. To remedy this situation, Universities in the Arabic world should interfere positively by upgrading their journals, encouraging the international as well as local researchers to submit their works to them . There’s also a growing tendency to write about Arabic literature in English or other languages ( Like I did in my essay on Frankenstein in Baghdad). Besides, Arab researchers prefer to publish their works in books rather than articles for understandable reasons. Finally, if there’s scarcity, it is not only in the academic research on Arabic literature, but in the field of humanities in general compared to pure and applied sciences.

Dear Jinan F. B. Al-Hajaj , I agree that universities in the Arab World should upgrade their journals and encourage their local and international researchers to submit their articles to these journals. Meanwhile, they should check the measures needed to have their journals accredited and ranked, and act accordingly.

Dr-Ahmed M. Al-Baidhani د. احمد البيضاني I totally agree. This is why, I think Journals from Arab Universities have a very long way to go, given the high standards required to advance in ranks. Some effort is certainly being exerted individually here and there to upgrade a few scientific journals (Medical journals for instance), but the situation for the humanities is more complex and I am afraid I am not very optimistic for the time being.

Jinan F. B. Al-Hajaj Shakir Tuleab Ali Alhayany Samy Azer Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak Dean Whitehead

I believe "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". The question is, have we started this single step yet?

Dr-Ahmed M. Al-Baidhani د. احمد البيضاني Thank you for the reply. As I mentioned earlier, there is some individual endeavour on the part of a handful of journals to be internationally recognized. Humble as much as any beginning is expected to be, these attempts, I hope, will constitute a solid basis for more similar work to follow. Medical and some other scientific Journals broke the spell so to speak, but humanities are lagging far behind. Nonetheless, editors of humanities journals are realizing the importance of stepping up their game and they know that soon in the future, their journals have slim chances to survive, given the intense competition in the field. Eventually, many of these journals have to cease publishing if they stay local and without international merits.