Regional Position of Iran in Terms of Scientific Publication in Immunology and Microbiology

This study aimed to determine the position of Iran in terms of scientific publications in Immunology and Microbiology, and also to identify the general status of science production and the patterns of publishing in the world, the Middle East, and Iran, analyze Iran scientific collaboration with the Middle East and the world, and explore the relationship between these indicators.

The study population contained 30622 Middle Eastern publications in Immunology and Microbiology from 2009 to 2018. Positioning the countries and exploring the relations of indicators, the exploratory factor analysis, and the correlation matrix were conducted using Scival.

According to the findings Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia were among the most powerful countries in the region in terms of publication, citation, regional, international, and overall scientific collaboration. As for regional positioning, the citations had the highest weight comparing to other indicators. Iran have the first rank in the indices of scientific production and citations with 43.63% and 33.76% respectively, third rank in the regional cooperation index with 43.63%, second rank in the extra-regional cooperation index with 23.56%, and also second rank in the total cooperation index with 22.12%.

The indicators were strongly connected togather; however, the citations and international scientific collaborations displayed the strongest amongst others. Despite Iran’s prominent position in both fields, the quality of the publication was lower than the regional and global average. This identified the most powerful and weak countries in the region in regards to scientific capacities in Immunology and Microbiology. Moreover, it reckoned that there was a strong relation between citations and scientific production in contrast with others.