A Comparative Study on Content of Scholarly Journals of Exercise Physiology in Iran

The aim of this study was to compare the content of Iranian scholarly journals in exercise physiology between the years 2009-2016. After searching the scholarly journals, eight journals in exercise physiology were found. After referring to archived published issues of each journal and entering raw quantitative data in encoded forms, descriptive statistics were calculated and frequency tables were created by SPSS software. Then, the content of all journals was analyzed and comparative study was done. A total number of 1045 articles have been published in all those journals. The most articles (263) were published in journal of Sport Sciences Research Institute and the minimum number of articles (56) were published in journal of Birjand University. In terms of review and acceptance speed and the contribution rate of full-professor authors, journal of Jahad Daneshgahi ranked first and journal of Mazandaran University ranked last. The highest percentage of experimental studies (24.30%) were published in journal of Sabzevar University and the highest percentage of disease studies (19.80%) were published in journal of Mazandaran University. In the case of age category variation of subjects in articles, journals of Guilan University and Sabzevar University had the most and lowest diversity, respectively. In terms of research area variety of articles, journals of Mazandaran University and Shahid Beheshti University had the highest balance and journal of Sabzevar University had the least balance. Generally, in order to increase the quality of publications, determining research priorities and making some restrictions on publications by journals are necessary.