Regional and Global Position of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Epidemiology Research

• Main Author: M Erfanmanesh
• Format: Article
• Language: fas
• Published: Tehran University of Medical Sciences 2017-12-01
• Series: مجله اپیدمیولوژی ایران
• Subjects: epidemiology; scientometrics; citation analysis
• Online Access: http://irje.tums.ac.ir/article-1-5813-en.html

Background and Objectives: The current research tries to investigate the position of Iran in regional and global research of epidemiology. Methods: To conduct this applied research, scientometric indicators were utilized. The study population comprised 53300 papers published by different countries during 2011 to 2015 indexed in Scopus database. Results: The results of the study revealed that Iranian Epidemiology researchers published 1196 international articles, making Iran the 16th country in the world and the first country in the Middle East region. Investigating the publication output of institutions showed that seven out of top ten institutions in the Middle East were from Iran. Iranian publications received 3.9 citations on average, while the mean number of citations for regional and global publications was 5.3 and 7.4, respectively. Moreover, the scientific output of Iranian researchers in epidemiology had a lower quality compared to the region and the world, based on three indicators: citedness rate, percentage of highly cited papers, and field-weighted citation impact. Conclusion: Despite the notable position of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the quantity of the research output in epidemiology, the quality of these publications is relatively low in comparison with regional and global average.