Network Clustering and Bibliometrics of Pharmacology and Pharmacy Research Outputs Published by Iranian Authors

Evidence‑based practice in medical sciences needs to publish confidential evidence that strongly depends on the research publications. This bibliometrics and network analytic study aims to evaluate the research publications of Iranian authors in pharmacology and pharmacy.

Through the pharmacology and pharmacy category of Web of Science (WOS), all published articles affiliated with an Iranian researcher as an author were retrieved. Full records of retrieved articles in the WOS, including author name and affiliation, journal name, citation number, cited references, and keywords, were exported to a plain text file. Network analysis through VOSviewer was used for mapping the characteristics of the retrieved articles. All statistical analyses were done using the Microsoft Excel and SPSS version 25.

The total number of Iran’s publications (citations) rose from 1557 articles (10,085 citations) in 2000–2009 years to 6271 articles (77791 citations) in 2010–2018 years. Tehran University of Medical Sciences was the most productive university. The total number of RCTs rose from 82 publications in 2000–2009 to 278 publications in 2010–2018. The same numbers for systematic reviews and meta‑analyses were four publications in 2000–2009 and 169 publications in 2010–2018. The five major topics of researches in pharmacology and pharmacy were drug delivery, basic pharmacology, oxidative stress, animal study, and molecular aspect of pharmacy.

This study showed a marked increasing rate of publications and received citations by Iranians in pharmacology and pharmacy. After 2010, the rate of articles in the high‑impact journals had growth. Furthermore, research articles in the highest level of evidence were more published by Iranians.