Dear Ali,

Do you mean journals written in Arabic? In this case, the problem may be that Arabic is a difficult language with difficult grammar and complicated writing. The number of foreign scientists reading and speaking Arabic is rather limited. Arabic writing is extraordinarily difficult, it uses only consonants etc.

Dear Dr. András,

Arabic journals accept articles in Arabic and English.

Dear All,

Artur may be right. This can be a question of market value which is not equivalent with the real value. Most people try to show their brain goods in well-tried or convertible markets – journals. Another approach may be the services of processing of a journal.

In Hungary, many Americans prefer Mc’Donalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut etc. and do not dare to taste local food.

I agree with @ Arthut, impact factor is only an indication of publishing business's sustainability and dominance of economy.

Dear All,

I had an acquaintance of Syria, he told me that publishing in Arabic journals is not estimated by their bosses and by the general scientific public. The situation is similar in Hungary too. Publications in Hungarian or in Hungarian journals are regarded as zero value. Interestingly, about 30-40 years ago there was not such a IF hysteria as these days.

Dear all,

I think that this is due to many cases.

For exemples:

Citations,

Publicity,

International langage...

Some few of arabic journals are indexed by Thomson Reuteurs.

Regards

@ Mark, I agree with you on that Impact factor is certainly is not a perfect system to measure scientific quality, then why to measure the absurdity....

I have witnessed a mad world, fooling each other in the name of science and impact factor, with no impact of their work on the society.... but everyone of those had great impact factor scores.

Dear Ali,

It is a matter of putting products in right venues and persistently commercializing it. The Arab world has considerable population size, have many scientists and researchers who produce world class results and the beginning of the demand of its results should start from that part of the world it self. Utilize results that are put there in to your works, consult journals that are produced there to research results and publish your results by citing results from those journals. The other possibility is to  register your journals in some world class editors such as Springer verlag, or  Elsevier, where people have developed an instinctive tendency to think as right places of scientific journals.

Dear Artur,

This saying may mean that not the idea, the message or the originality matter but its marketing. After paying for the goods, nobody will ask how the “product” was got. Is it right?

Dear Roland,

Has anything changed? Are Romanian publications positively evaluated these days?

Ali, a very good question, which perhaps is best addressed in a wider historical context. For some reason Arab countries had isolated themselves - as recently as 2002, a UN report authored by Arab scholars had noted that Quote in total, since the reign of the Caliph Mamun in the 9th century,  the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year Unquote.

This willful isolation has led to all kinds of consequences, including your observation above. Thankfully, huge progress has been made since 2002, and the situation will most likely fully correct itself over the foreseeable future.

Dear H. Chris,

Have you any available data (URL?) on the historical isolation you mentioned?

Dear Andras, look at e.g. 

http://www.economist.com/node/1213392

Look also, in particular, at its § titled 'knowledge'

Good question,

The reason is due to the bad selection for unprofessional people  to fill scientific positions, causing the deterioration of the Arab scientific reality in general.

Science and research need clear pattern ship from politics, administration and academics. Research needs clear objective rules to be achieved successfully. Since research is based on critical thinking and universal reviewing, the country and its administration should be organized under a real competitive democratic scheme where critics and multi controls are bases of its functioning, unless research results could turn under unknown predators and vicious people who could be able to steal research results or make business with science in informal way and put  researchers in insecurity. Scientific research needs objectivity in its functioning and in its administration and clear  target purposes.

In fact, it is a question of political economy in the region. Some do not want that except elite, people t learn a foreign international language, i.e. English. It will be a political suicide for the rulers. Some contrast science with religion which a folly especially in case of Islam. The remaining researchers trained elsewhere either do not return to their homeland or do not contribute to science journals in their home lands.

In these conditions, readership is bound to be limited and standard of journals may not be of high standard to be classified as impact factor journals.

It is bitter to say that Arab Journals even those long released don't have rigorous reviewing of articles. The outcome would be inferior to journals with impact factor. That is why they stay behind.

Scientific research has high impact on any country as added value to its development and some researches could be put on strategic level. Researchers should be able to work under clear pattern and under competent people from politics and administration to be secured from bad or viscous people and /or from wrong usage of their results. So the natural objectivity of science should meets as well its functioning and running who should be in junction with universal standards ; since research works are evaluated by international peers (for journals and conferences talks).  A country who do not recognizes the competence of his researchers and scientists, who do not respects their works  evaluated at international level and who do not fixes politics and rules with the adequacy  of  the scientific objectivity is  a country who do not wants any development and works for high probabilities of his collapse. Scientific administration without scientific objectivity couldn't allows scientific development and couldn't works

Major Arab countries have not true policies and politics for scientific development despite of the competency of many of their academics, scientists and researchers.  Arab countries are mostly not ruled by critical thinking, and work without reciprocate retort, debate and evidence of arguments, who are the pillar of scientific works. So if the running of science from high political posts till universities, research institutes etc...is not scientific basis, the rest could be useless. So how scientific journals there could have impact factors. Scientific journals need high research works and need high  critical reviewing to be sound serious, then the impact factor could occur as a competitor parameter of journal's quality among others for academics as well as for marketing purpose

Several reasons can be cited for this:

1. The impact factor is decided by quality of the articles appeared on a particular journal. Quality is translated into popularity, which means more readers and citations. The articles appearing in the Arab journals as far as I know cannot be compared with the articles in popular English journals in quality and clarity, resulting in poor number of citations which in turn affect the impact factor negatively.

2. The language of the Arab journals, I believe, is Arabic, which is NOT lingua franca of modern science which is English. Over 95% of the practicing scientists can neither read nor write Arabic, so they prefer NOT to send their articles to Arab journals, which also reduces the popularity of Arab journals. This does not mean that non English journals cannot retain high impact factor. Take the case of Angewandte Chemie (  a popular German journal publishing applied chemistry articles): they have both German and International publishing. This means this journal does not loose high quality research work despite being traditionally an non English journal.

3. Outreach: The English journals are trying to reach each and every practicing and non practicing scientists and academicians on earth by being promoted through research networks, professional bodies and advertisements. Such an advantage does not practically exist for Arab journals.