The mentalities of basic science's leading researchers about the scientific community in Iran

The present study, based on an ethnological approach in sociology, studies the mentalities of researchers in regards to the scientific community in Iran. The theoretical section of the paper presents the sociological views concerning social system and social action and institutionalist and ethnological standpoints about the scientific communities. This study used a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews with 69 leading researchers, mainly in basic sciences, who had published large amounts of papers in refereed journals indexed in ISI. In the findings section of the paper, researchers’ mentalities are classified. These mentalities include categories of existence or not-existence of scientific communities in Iran, their characteristics and their definitions by researchers. In the concluding section, different viewpoints are compared with each other and the study results are reviewed against Merton’s ideas as a leading figure of institutionalist theorist of sociology.