Evaluation of Articles Published on Emergency Medicine in Iran from 2001 to 2018; a Review Study

Evaluating the studies conducted in the field of emergency medicine and finding a comprehensive view of the current situation of research in emergency medicine in Iran can provide a model for prioritizing research topics according to the needs and resources of the country. The present review study has been performed with the purpose of evaluating papers published in the field of emergency medicine in Iran over a 10-year period.

To conduct this study, search engines such as Google Scholar and databases such as Web of Science, Pubmed, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane, ISC, and SID, were searched to find all articles published in the field of emergency medicine in Iran using keywords listed based on the review of articles, and published articles were evaluated based on the subject of the study, type of study, methodology, etc.

The number of published articles related to emergency medicine in Iran over the period of this study (2001-2018) was 774. Out of these 774 articles, due to similarity and unavailability of the full text of some articles, they were removed along with duplicates and only 120 articles were analyzed and the information related to each article was entered into Excel software, separately. Analyzes showed that the number of researches has been growing since 2011 so that nearly 90% of the articles were published during this period. Appropriate treatment measure was the most studied area, among which more attention was paid to heart diseases. These articles were published in more than 33 domestic and foreign journals, with Emergency Medicine Journal having the highest number of articles. The average index of articles was 0.87, which despite its growth in recent years, still seemed low. The number of citations was examined and Iranian emergency medicine articles had few citations. Also, the review of articles based on the pyramid of evidence showed that group studies had the highest value.

This study showed that the production of articles by Iranian authors in the field of medical emergencies has steadily improved. However, the quality indicators of articles and authors, such as the number of citations, are low and need more attention.