The Content Analysis of Articles The 1st Volume of Medical Encyclopedia of Islam and Iran

The present study has focused on the content analysis of articles published in The Medical Encyclopedia of Islam and Iran. This is an applied study which is performed using content analysis. The population of this research includes the only published volume published of The Medical Encyclopedia of Islam and Iran (Volume 1). The 1st volume consisted of 389 articles. Due to the limited published volumes of the encyclopedia، sampling was not performed and all articles of the Volume 1 were examined. The articles were studied for collecting data. The required were recorded in a control list that was designed based on the fundamental questions. The results of this study are as follows: The review of the authors of the articles showed that the majority (43. 75%) of authors have a master''s degree and women (52. 34%) were involved in the production of articles more than men (47. 66%). Also، most authors (92. 19%) are of Iranian origin. The investigation of the encyclopedia articles showed that of 389 articles، 370 articles (95. 12%) were original articles and 19 articles (4. 88%) were translated articles. Among them، 219 (56. 3%) belong to individuals، 106 (27. 25%) to specific topics، 41 (10. 54%) to the subject of books and publications، 15 (3. 85%) to the general theme and 8 articles (2. 06%) belong to other topics. Each article include 2. 64 pages of the encyclopedia on average and 16. 58 citations per paper have been used on average. Also، among the studied articles، a total of 106 images are used only in 93 articles and 296 articles contain no images. The investigation of the citations used in encyclopedia articles showed that that of 6451 total citations in Volume 1، the most citations (66. 98%) were in languages other than Persian and only 33. 02% of the citations are in Persian. In general، Arabic is allocated itslef the highest citations with 49. 31%. The review of the publication time of citations revealed that the most citations (54. 15%) are in Gregorian date. and then Hijri date (36. 8%) and AH (4. 84%). The results showed that the most frequent cited authors in the articles were Ibn Abi Asibae with a frequency of 128. The most frequent cited reference was Uyun Al-Anba-Fi- Tabaghate-Al-Ateba book (in Arabic) of Ibn Abi Asibae with a frequency of 123. Also، no significant relationship was found between number of citations and nationality of authors. However، it was found that there is direct significant relationship between the time of publication and citation count.