Iran's nursing research in Web of Science from 2000 to 2016: Scientometrics study

Aim: Nursing is an important area in medical sciences whose developments can influence health care. One of the development indices in every field or profession is its scientific productions published in international journals. So, this study intends to investigate Iran’s Nursing articles from 2000 to 2016.
This research has been conducted by scientometrics approach. Research population includes all Iranian articles in nursing area indexed in Web of Science from 2000 to 2016 indexed in Web of Science in terms of number, productive and influential authors, international co-authorship, and subject world cloud and so on. For data analysis, a combination of bibliometric software, including NetRaw, BibExel and Cities are applied.
Findings revealed that during 2000-2016, Iran’s nursing studies have a growing trend. Ahmadi F, with 44 articles and h-index of 12, is the most productive and influential scientist in Iran’s Nursing studies. Iranian Nursing authors have many collaborative articles with their counterparts in USA, Australia, and Sweden, respectively. Moreover, qualitative research is the major research methodology within nursing studies. “Anxiety”, “Children”, “Breast Cancer”, and “Cancer” are the most frequent keywords in Iranian nursing studies.
The growth of nursing scientific productions is an indicative of the importance of this subject area in health care services; but, there is no balanced growth in various subjects. Meanwhile, the tendency of Iranian Nursing research is toward qualitative research which is due to the nature of the nurse-patient interactionism