Assessing the Research Performance of the Iranian Medical Academics and Universities: A Bibliometric Analysis

BACKGROUND: Implementing bibliometric indicators is the most prominent way to quantify the current status of research performance. This study aimed to map out the research performance of Iranian medical academics and universities in 2020 and determine its progress from 2016. METHODS: Data were extracted from the Iranian scientometric information database and universities’ scientometric information database. Then, the data were analyzed to provide descriptive statistics of bibliometric indicators. Besides, the association between the research productivity of academics or universities with their background characteristics was investigated using Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis, and chi-square tests. RESULTS: Iranian medical academics had extensive research productivity from 2016 to 2020, leading to 2.5-fold increase in their median number of papers. The research productivity was heterogeneous among the academics, with an H-index ranging from 0 to 98, and a median of 4. The research productivity was different by gender, academic position, general field of study, and academic degree. The class 1 universities had a higher quantity in research performance; however, there was no difference in quality-related indices comprising citations per paper ratio and high impact publication rate (SJR Q1) among different university classes. The median international collaboration rate has followed a growing trend in recent years and was 17% in 2020. CONCLUSION: There is a remarkable growth in the research productivity of Iranian academics and universities. Iranian research community historically had rare international research collaborations; however, promising growth is shown in this regard. To maintain the growth in research productivity, the country should increase research and development expenditure, address gender disparities, supply universities that are lagging behind, facilitate further international collaboration, and support national journals to be indexed in the international citation databases.