Evaluation of scientific outputs of postgraduate students at the School of Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences during 2010-2019

One of the indicators of the development of any country is the volume of its scientific and technological production at the national and international levels. The aim of this study was to evaluate the scientific output of postgraduate students at the Health School of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences during the period 2010-2019.

This descriptive-documentary study was conducted using scientometric methods. The statistical population included published articles extracted from dissertations of postgraduate students of the Faculty of Health in WOS, Scopus, Medline and other databases during 2010-2019. After extraction, data were analyzed using Excel 2013 and SPSS 21 through descriptive and inferential statistics (t-test and analysis of variance). A value level of 0.05 was considered significant.

At the master's level, of 270 dissertations reviewed, 166 (61.5%) ones and at the Ph.D. level, of 30 defended dissertations, 22 (73.3%) ones resulted in the publication of articles. The number of published articles per capita of Shiraz School of Health master's and doctoral students was 0.77 (moderate) and 1.16 (acceptable), respectively. A total of 243 articles were published out of the 300 postgraduate dissertations reviewed. Of all published articles, 138 (57%), 26 (11%), 21 (8%), and 58 (24%) were published in WOS, Scopus, PubMed, and other indexes, respectively. Statistical test analysis showed that there was no significant difference between articles published per capita and gender of researchers
(p= 0.666). The highest per capita percentage of articles published per dissertation was in Environmental Health Engineering (1.2), Occupational Health and Safety Engineering (1.12) and Biology and Control of Disease (1.10) Departments, respectively during 2010-2013.

The scientific output of postgraduate dissertations at the Shiraz School of Health was average and similar to that of other universities in the country.