Evaluation and measurement of Third World countries research publications: a citation and country -by- country citation study. PhD. Dissertation. The University New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to evaluate and measure the Third World Countries (TWC) contribution in Science at the international level. To achieve this aim, 10% of the TWC (excluding India) research publications in Science Citation Index for 1985-1989 were selected. The data were analyzed by two methods:

a) Citation analysis for studying the productivity, quality, usefulness and impact of the research in TWC and for describing the publication pattern of TWC scientists.
b) Country-by-country citation analysis for understanding the knowledge structure of scientific literature and comparing and contrasting these countries: firstly, according to their observed and expected rates in each scientific discipline, and secondly, by their national disciplinary distribution.

This study found that only a few TWO have published a large number of TWC research findings during the study period, 1985-1989 and have received a large number of the citations during the citation period, 1985-1993. TWC scientists generally tend to publish their research output in mainstream journals rather than TWC journals. They also received most of the citations to their articles from non-TWC. The scientists of TWC cite each other infrequently either nationally or cross- nationally. The top TWC or those countries which may have a leading role in scientific publications in each scientific discipline were identified. It was concluded that the contribution of the TWC (excluding India) throughout all the scientific fields was on average below the expected rates; however in specific fields some countries were well above the expected rates. TWC research suffers from some factors such as the low number of publications and scientific journals:
insufficient participation in all scientific fields; and the obstacle of English as a second language for most of the TWC scientists.
Some suggestions for the TWC to overcome their present situation include: increasing the number of scientific publications particularly in English; publishing some of their research findings in Third World Journals for greater local and regional dissemination and considering ways of improving their communication and publication patterns amongst themselves and between countries. Some suggestions for further research are discussed.