The Scientific Production and Scientific Mapping of Iranian Researchers in Traditional Medicine during 1990-2011 in Web of Science

Traditional medicine is not only useful in health care and improvement of quality of life, but also is applied in diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Hence, paying more attention to this area is of high important. This study aimed to evaluate the scientific production and scientific mapping of Iranian researchers in traditional medicine during 1990-2011 in “Web of Science” database.

This was an applied study in which scientometric indicators have been used. Documents of Iranian researchers in traditional medicine in Web of Sciences during 1990-2011 were analyzed and then, the historiography of scientific productions was depicted.

Studies have shown that Iranian researchers in traditional medicine could be ranked as the 26th in the world in term of scientific productions with 288 document records. Furthermore, the growth rate of scientific publications of this area was 53.3%. In addition, Abdollahi with 13 records and Tehran University of Medical Sciences with 60 records had the highest rate of scientific production in this field. Moreover, most documents were presented as articles and were published in Journal of Ethnopharmacology. No cluster was established from the top 50 records.

In general, growth rate of scientific production in traditional medicine of Iranian researcher has an upward trend. Nevertheless, global and total citations of these publications are very poor which indicates that these publications are not effective enough.