Illustrating and Analyzing the Com-parative Knowledge Map of the Key-word Persian Gulf and the Fake Name Arabian Gulf

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 M.A. Degree in Information Science and Knowledge Studies, Irani-an National Institute for Oceanography and Atmospheric Science, Tehran, Iran.

2 Professor, Department of Information Science & Knowledge Studies, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran,

3 Associate Professor, Iranian National Institute for Oceanography and Atmospheric Science, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

n the present century, due to national and political tendencies and prejudices, the name of the Persian Gulf, which originates from ancient texts dating back to before Christ (BC), has been distorted by some individuals in official correspondence and scientific literature, being replaced with terms such as the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf. The main aim of this research is to conduct a descriptive analysis of scientific publications containing the keywords of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Gulf (fake name) in the Web of Science database from 1975 to 2024.
Methodology: The current research is an applied, descriptive, and analytical study employing scientometric methods. The study population includes all scientific publications containing the keywords of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Gulf (fake name) indexed in the Web of Science database from 1975 to 2024. VOSviewer and Bibexcel software were used to extract data and generate visual maps, while Excel and SPSS were utilized for data analysis.
Findings: The findings indicate that, within the Web of Science document database, by the end of 2024, 7,395 documents were indexed using the keyword Persian Gulf and 3,987 documents were indexed with the keyword Arabian Gulf. The highest number of documents was published in 2021 for Persian Gulf and in 2020 for Arabian Gulf. Furthermore, over 90% of these documents were in English and experienced exponential growth. A larger proportion of outputs—84% for the Persian Gulf and 85% for the Arabian Gulf—were published as articles. The subject area "Environmental Science Ecology" contains the highest number of scientific documents for both keywords. The co-occurrence network of keywords demonstrates that for the keyword Persian Gulf, there are 572 keywords with a minimum occurrence of five, forming 17 clusters containing 4,290 links with a total link strength of 7,766. In comparison, the fake name of Arabian Gulf has 490 keywords with a minimum frequency of five, forming 15 clusters with 2,389 links and a total link strength of 3,864. For both keywords, the most frequently occurring terms with the highest total link strength were Gulf war illness, Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, and Gulf war syndrome. Also, “Taxonomy,” and “Ecological risk” were used currently. Iran (Persian Gulf) and Saudi Arabia (Arabian Gulf) are top countries in this field, with the highest level of collaboration occurring with American researchers. In contrast, scientific participation is lowest among the countries bordering the Persian Gulf. An investigation into the collaboration among universities and research institutes revealed that, regarding the Persian Gulf keyword, Islamic Azad University leads with 45 links and a total link strength of 1,952. In contrast, for the fabricated keyword of Arabian Gulf, Kuwait University is the top with 159 links and a total link strength of 325. Scientific collaborations among researchers showed that 75 percent of all scientific publications in terms of Persian Gulf and 79 percent of those deceptively labeled as Arabian Gulf were produced through collaboration. For both keywords, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Gulf (fake name) the strength of collaboration was calculated using the Degree of Collaboration (0.77; 0.79), Collaborative Index (4.51; 4.51), and Collaborative Coefficient (0.57; 0.55), respectively. The co-authorship network analysis showed that, in the Persian Gulf subject area, the top authors were Sina Dobaradaran, with 46 documents and a total link strength of 160, and Kang H.K., with 1,450 citations. Regarding the fake name of Arabian Gulf, John Burt led with 55 documents, Bernhard Riegl had 1,497 citations, and Haitham Amin had a total link strength of 191. Citation analysis showed that documents with Persian Gulf in the keywords totaled 7,395 and received 132,885 citations, with an h-index of 129, peaking in 2021. In contrast, publications using the fictional name Arabian Gulf achieved 3987 published texts, received 72,204 citations, and had an h-index of 95, peaking in 2020. The top journal for publications featuring both keywords is " Marine Pollution Bulletin, which has an impact factor of 5.3.
Conclusion: The growth rate of outputs related to the Persian Gulf is higher than that of the Arabian Gulf (fake name), while the diversity of topics and the level of participation are higher in the Arabian Gulf field (fake name). According to citation metrics, the most influential authors in terms of the Persian Gulf are from England and the United States, whereas in the field of Athe rabian Gulf (fake name), authors from the Arabian countries bordering this water basin have the highest number of publications and citations.

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References

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