A report focusing on the developments in research produced across the Middle East has found that progress is being made especially within the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, reports the THE.

The Global Research Report Middle East, published by data provider Thomson Reuters, found that the region’s share of global research papers has doubled over the past ten years. Turkey produced almost half of the region’s output, with Iran’s output increasing more than 11-fold.

The overall impact of the region’s research (assessed by the average citation count per paper) was found to be steadily increasing, although remains at half the world average. However, the report did identify several areas of relative research excellence in which the region’s percentage of highly cited papers exceeds the world average.

The region’s largest share of output was found to be in the fields of engineering, agricultural science and clinical medicine. Social science subjects made up the lowest share, but are noted to be increasing at the fastest rate.