Citation Analysis of Articles of the Journal of Qom University of Medical Sciences during 2007-2013, Iran

Regarding the important role and position of journals in presentation of the most up-to-date scholarly information, the scientific and meticulous evaluation of such sources is very essential. Te present research was carried out to determine the citation status in the articles of the Journal of Qom University of Medical Sciences. This research, as a descriptive-survey study, aimed to determine citation status of articles published in the Journal of Qom University of Medical Sciences using citation analysis during 2007-2013. In this study, the exploration of articles and bibliographic information (citations) of the articles of 24 issuesof the Journal of Qom University of Medical Sciences were investigated. One thousand and thirty-ninepersonstook part in writing 254 articles during 2007-2013. Most of the articles were written by co-authors,in the form of collaboration of 2,3, or 4 authors, and only 4 articles had been written as single author. Women significantly (40%) contributed to writing the papers. The most cited sources were related to data sources published during 2005 to 2009 (33.1%), and most of the citations were to journals (85.4%) and then to books. Most of the citations were to Latin sources (93.3%). The highest academic ranking order of the authors was assistant professor and then Master degree. The most referred Latin journal was “The New England Journal of Medicine” and the most referred Persian journal was “Journal of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences”. Considering that in this study, most of the citations were to journals, therefore, it is necessary to provide researchers with easy access to core and most cited journals in medicine and other related fields through valid databases. Also, it is essential that university library attempttoprovide data needs of researchers and faculty members, and also officials should try to equip the libraries with up-to-date sources.