A Matching Study between the Keywords Used in Persian Medical Articles and Persian Medical Thesaurus

This research studies the extent to which keywords in published articles in Persian medical journals are matched with Persian medical thesaurus terms. The content analysis method is used and data gathered using a self-designed checklist. 1005 keywords obtained from 269 articles published during the years 2008 to 2009 in 58 titles. The journals were selected from the Commission of Iranian Medical Journals Database. In two subject areas of Sciences and Clinical Medicine, there was "full match" by 38.5, "partial match" by 41 and "No match" by 20.5 percent among keywords and thesaurus terms. This finding shows that "partial match" is more than "full match" between the article keywords and thesaurus terms. When "full match" and "no match" between article keywords and Persian Medical thesaurus terms are seen, there is no significant difference between two subject areas, whereas a significant difference is observed while "partial match" is considered. Plenty of reasons result in mismatch between terms used by authors, indexers and users.