Measuring Research Inequality in Medical Sciences Universities of Iran from 2008 to 2017: A Descriptive Study

Research plays an important role in solving health problems in the community. One main mission of higher education institutions is developing research tailored to the needs of the community by providing equal and fair opportunities for research sectors. The present study aimed to measure inequality in the rea of research in Iranian medical sciences universities. In this descriptive study, the Gini Coefficient (GC) was used to measure inequality from 2010 to 2016. The indexes included the number of published papers, citations, citation per paper, self-citation, Scimago Journal Rank (SJR), Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), Citescore, Hirsch
(h-index), number of faculty members, number of students, and educational and research budget. Stata 14 software was used for data analysis. During the study years, the GC of SJR, SNIP, and Citescore varied from 0.65 to 0.73, 0.62 to 0.73, and 0.61 to 0.72, respectively. In addition, The GC of international papers, total articles, self-citation, citation per article, Hirsch index, and total citations varied from 0.62 to 0.70, 0.56 to 0.66, 0.22 to 0.27, 0.12 to 0.28, 0.33 to 0.39, and 0.57 to 0.72, respectively. The GC of the number of faculty members and budget ranged from 0.26-0.40 and 0.34-0.67, respectively. Inequality in self-citation and citation per article was relatively fair, while Hirsh and the number of faculty members had intermediate inequality. Other indicators had a high and very high inequality. To reduce inequality, developing of the balanced research infrastructures in medical universities is recommended.