The Rate of Attention to Iranian Papers Published on Common Cancers in Social Networks: An Altmetrics Approach

The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of Iranian scientific outputs on common cancers published in PubMed database during 2011-2015. In this applied, descriptive-analytical study, a scientometrics analysis was used. The study was conducted on all research papers which were written by Iranian scholars on stomach, colon, breast, prostate, and lung cancers and were indexed in PubMed database during 2011-2015. Data were extracted using Altmetrics Bookmarklet tool and analyzed by excel software. According to the findings, the number of articles published by Iranian scholars on stomach, colon, breast, prostate, and lung cancers in 2011 was 25, 40, 88, 20 and 15, respectively. The number of articles on the same subjects in 2015 was 52, 93,256,44, and 32, in that order; however, a small percentage of the research papers were assigned a digital object identifier or had altmetrics scores. Mendeley had the highest proportion among other social networks to represent Iranian scholars’ outputs. Although the rate of scientific publications of Iranian scholars on common cancers has totally increased, they were heterogeneous in terms of quality and Altmetrics score. Therefore, it is recommended that the researchers select journals that assign a digital object identifier to their articles and publish their scientific papers in social media as well.