When Metrics Matter Too Much: How Visibility Pressures Undermine MENA Research Integrity

The global research ecosystem increasingly depends on visibility metrics-such as indexing status, impact factors, and citation counts-to evaluate scholarly output. While these benchmarks provide measurable standards, they disproportionately disadvantage researchers and journals from underrepresented regions, particularly the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This article argues that metric-driven publishing norms reinforce structural barriers linked to limited infrastructure, linguistic challenges, and editorial biases, leaving regionally significant research undervalued and often invisible in global discourse. It further highlights pathways to greater inclusion, including capacity building, multilingual publishing, and regional-global indexing integration. The article calls for a reorientation from metric-centric validation toward a balanced model that recognizes both global visibility and local relevance, thereby fostering knowledge equity and advancing the decolonization of scholarly communication.