Building and construction research in Malaysia: A bibliometric analysis

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of building and construction research authored by researchers reporting an affiliation to institutions in Malaysia from years 2000 to 2015. The objectives are to identify the most productive research institutions and researchers, the research themes at these institutions, the output and impact of the research carried out and the most prolific authors. A search on the Scopus database identified 1,668 articles published during this period. The results indicate that research output was primarily from the five public research universities reflecting their privileged funding model and that output had increased rapidly in recent years. Topics of research were broad ranging from materials and structures in the engineering field, to the more conventional construction management and building science topics. Although numerous authors from Malaysia have high citation counts and h-indices, the overall impact of the research was low with many articles either published in low impact journals or received few citations. There is evidence of publication inflation where the increase in publication counts have not been matched by a comparable increase in citation counts. National innovation or research funding policies must rigorously address both the quantity and quality of research outputs to accurately assess impact.