Arab Spring's Impact on Science through the Lens of Scholarly Attention, Funding, and Migration

Abstract

The 2010-2011 Arab Spring reverberated far beyond politics, reshaping how the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) is studied. Analyzing 3.7 million Scopus-indexed articles published between 2002 and 2019, we find that mentions of ten of these countries in titles or abstracts rose significantly after 2011 relative to the global baseline, with Egypt receiving the greatest attention in the region. We link this surge to two intertwined mechanisms: an increase in research funding directed at the MENA region and the emigration of researchers who continued publishing on their countries of origin. Our analysis reveals that Saudi Arabia has emerged as a regional hub for studying the affected countries, attracting funding and scholars, and thereby playing a significant role in shaping the scientific narrative on the region. These findings demonstrate how political upheaval can reshape global knowledge flows by altering who studies whom, with what resources, and in which disciplines.

Figures (24)

• Figure 1: Scholarly Attention in Target Countries Pre- and Post-Arab Spring. (a), Geographical locations of the target countries. (b), The difference in total scholarly attention before and after the Arab Spring across target countries highlights non-uniform changes. In all panels, the gray area represents the interquartile range for global trends, with the dashed line indicating the median and the dotted line showing the mean. Country-specific trends reveal significant increases in the volume and distribution percentiles of scientific publications for countries experiencing government overthrow (c), civil war (d), and governmental changes (e). The vertical spans indicate periods of unrest in these countries associated with the Arab Spring and its aftermath.
• Figure 2: Scholarly attention related to research on the Arab Spring. (a) Country-specific scholarly attention related to research on the Arab Spring. Research focusing on the government overthrow (GO) group attracted the highest scholarly attention, followed by the civil war group (CW). (b), Proportion of Arab Spring-related research as part of total scholarly attention by target country. Syria and Libya, classified under the civil war group, exhibit the highest shares, whereas the governmental changes group shows minimal shares. The vertical dotted line represents the year 2011, marking the onset of the Arab Spring.
• Figure 3: Domestic and foreign scholarly attention towards target countries before (2002–2010) and after (2011–2019) the Arab Spring. Attention from domestic (a) and foreign sources (b) and the foreign-to-domestic ratio (c) are shown for each country across three groups: government overthrow (GO), civil war (CW), and governmental changes (GC). Filled bars represent values before the Arab Spring, while hatched bars indicate values after the Arab Spring. The world's median attention before and after the Arab Spring is marked with solid and dashed black lines, respectively.
• Figure 4: Share of domestic and foreign scholarly attention before and after the Arab Spring by discipline. The target countries are split into three groups: government overthrow (GO), civil war (CW), and governmental changes (GC). Filled bars represent values before the Arab Spring, while hatched bars indicate values after the Arab Spring. The world's median before and after the Arab Spring is marked with solid and dashed black lines, respectively. In domestic attention (a–d), social sciences consistently held the smallest share for most countries. After the Arab Spring, the proportion of social sciences in the governmental changes group (excluding Morocco) rose above the median. In foreign attention (e–h), social sciences showed a notably higher share, particularly in Yemen and Libya, where it became the dominant field post-Arab Spring.
• Figure 5: Geographical distribution of foreign scholarly attention sources towards target countries: (a) Differences in average yearly scholarly attention towards all target countries: Western countries alongside Saudi Arabia show the highest differences, while countries in the Global South show the least. (b) Normalized rank change capturing relative attention changes: The impact of the Arab Spring is more evident in the region and among Islamic countries. Saudi Arabia is among the top 5 countries in terms of the difference in average and rank inertia metrics, highlighting its significant influence in research on the target countries. Territories are visualized with Geopandas den2024geopandas.