Scientific output of the Universities in Sanandaj according to Scopus database

At present, the most important factor of scientific productivity in the world is the number of scientific articles indexed in major international databases, and the number of citations given to these articles. Using scientometric methods, we evaluated scientific output of the universities in Sanandaj city including Kurdistan University, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences and Islamic Azad University of Sanandaj in a decade (from 2004 to 2013). In this citation analysis study, data collection was carried out on the internet using Scopus citation database. Affiliation of each university was searched through search box of Scopus. We collected data for each university in relation to the following indices: "number of articles published in the last ten years", "number of citations given to the articles in the last ten years", "H- index" and "ten journals" which had published the highest number of articles. Data were analyzed by using "analyze results" part of the database. Three universities with 2049 documents and 9192 citations contributed to one percent of Iran scientific production. Kurdistan University had 1372 documents and 7969 citations, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences had 372 documents and 837 citations and Islamic Azad University of Sanandaj had 305 documents and 386 citations. H-indices for the three universities were 37, 14 and 9 respectively. Islamic Azad University of Sanandaj and Kurdistan University with 98 and 239 documents respectively in 2011 and Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences with 139 documents in 2013 had the highest growth in the number of articles. The ratio of total number of citations to the articles for three universities was 4.5, meaning that each article had received 4.5 citations. This ratio was 5.8 for Kurdistan University, 2.25 for Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences and 1.26 for Islamic Azad University of Sanandaj. Although science production in the universities of Sanandaj has shown an upward trend, but it is lower than the mean national science production. Attention to the potential of researchers of Kurdistan province and revision of the research policies can increase the contribution of this province to scientific productivity of our country.