The Compliance Level of Structural Requirements of Iranian Medical Journals with Structural Criteria of Web of Science

In recent years, the number of Iranian medical journals has been growing rapidly. These journals must observe the required criteria in order to be indexed in international indices. The aim of this study was to determine the compliance level of Iranian medical journals with indexing criteria of Web of Science (WOS).
The bibliometric approach was used to conduct this descriptive-applied study. The study population included all 307 scientific journals approved by the Ministry of Health, but not indexed in WOS. The data collection tool was the inventory control extracted from WOS database. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS20 using descriptive statistics.
The lowest total score gained, by the journals surveyed, was 6 and the highest was 15. The most frequent journal (20/2 percent) gained 10. The average score in the journals surveyed was calculated 11/5 in terms of observing WOS criteria and the overall structural compliance of Iranian medical journals with structural indices of WOS was calculated 71/9 percent.
In terms of observing the structural indicators of WOS, Iranian medical journals are in a satisfactory level; however, in terms of following standards of the international editorial statements, observing the international diversity of authors, mentioning the identifier code of digital resources and publishers, they are not desirable. Observing these criteria by journals may increase the chance of being indexed in WOS.