The Arab Spring is a major socio-political movement that reshaped democratic aspirations in the Middle East and North Africa, attracting global attention through news, social media, and academic discourse. However, its consequences on the academic landscape in the region are still unclear. Here, we conduct the first study of scholarly attention toward 10 target countries affected by the Arab Spring by analyzing more than 25 million articles published from 2002 to 2019. We find that changes in scholarly attention were unevenly distributed among target countries, with Egypt attracting the most attention. We reveal strong correlations between increases in scholarly attention given by source countries and increases in funding for research about the target countries as well as increased immigration of scholars from the affected region to them. Notably, our analysis reveals Saudi Arabia's positioning as a key player, among Western nations, that shapes research in the region.

翻译：阿拉伯之春是一场重塑中东与北非地区民主诉求的重大社会政治运动，通过新闻、社交媒体及学术讨论吸引了全球关注。然而，该运动对该地区学术生态的影响尚不明确。本文通过分析2002年至2019年间发表的逾2500万篇学术论文，首次对受阿拉伯之春影响的10个目标国家所获得的学术关注进行了研究。我们发现，学术关注度的变化在目标国家间分布不均，其中埃及获得的关注最为显著。研究进一步揭示，来源国对目标国家学术关注度的提升，与针对这些目标国家的研究经费增加以及受影响地区学者向来源国的移民增长呈现强相关性。值得注意的是，我们的分析表明，沙特阿拉伯在西方国家的行列中扮演着关键角色，影响着该地区的研究格局。