A Century of Scholarly Collaboration by Brucella and Brucellosis Researchers: A Scientometric Study

Brucellosis zoonotic infectious disease is caused by the dangerous bacterium Brucella and is one of the common infections in many countries of the world. In addition to pathogenic, clinical and clinical cases, Brucella as a dangerous bacterium can be considered a potential biological weapon and weapon in Biowarfare and Passive Defense. Therefore, brucellosis, as a serious threat to public health, health and human life, is always under special attention. Its emergence and re-emergence can be considered a serious threat to public health and human health. The purpose of the current research is to study the productivity and efficiency of Brucella and Brucellosis researchers in their scientific collaboration network.

The present research is considered to be a type of scientometric applied research, which uses the co-authorship analysis technique as well as the social network analysis method to study the productivity and efficiency of researchers in a 100-year period with centrality index methods, examining the co-authorship and co-citation network based on the documents indexed in the database. Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) has been done. In this research, keywords were selected from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) 2020 and Bibexcel, Net draw, UCINET 6.528.0.0, VOSVIEWER, SPSS 16, Ravar PreMap and Excell software were used.

A researcher like "Cloeckaert, A.," was the most productive (most productive) and most efficient (most cited) researcher in the field of Brucella and Brucellosis and had the highest rank in degree centrality. Also, there is a significant relationship between the centrality scores (degree centrality and betweenness) of researchers and the level of productivity (number of articles) and the level of efficiency (number of citations) of researchers. The existence of a significant relationship between productivity and intermediate indicators, which shows the social influence of individuals, also indicates that researchers who have a high intermediate index have a mediating position in the information flow of the co-authorship network in the territory of Brucella and Brucellosis, as a result, more articles are also Interaction with other writers will produce. On the other hand, no significant relationship was observed between the closeness centrality score and researchers' productivity. In the present study, "Cloeckaert, A.**Zygmunt, M.S.," the best co-author couple were identified, who had scientific and expert cooperation with each other in the field of Brucella and Brucellosis with 63 contributions. As a result, the most participating researchers in the field of Brucella and Brucellosis are in WOSCC (1920-2020), which shows the superiority of these two authors in the mentioned research field. Examining the components of the researchers' co-authorship network shows that this network, like many other social networks, consists of one main component and 3 small components. The results related to the density of the co-authorship network show that in this period only 0.086 of the total possible and potential relationships have been actualized in this network, the tendency of the researchers to form different clusters through co-authorship was low. The citations received by researchers had a positive relationship with the amount of publications of their articles. The higher centrality score of researchers has a high impact on their position in the co-authorship social network. According to centrality indices, "Cloeckaert, A." and "Kim, S." have the highest degree centrality. These people have played an active role in the co-authorship network of the studied area and have co-authored more than other researchers. "Letesson, J.J." and "Cloeckaert, A.," have the highest closeness centrality. This means that their placement in the center of proximity and having the shortest distance with other researchers in a network is of strategic importance for that researcher, and this proximity to other authors will allow him to access all the researchers in the network faster than any other author. "O'Callaghan, D." and "Jiang, H." have the highest betweenness centrality, so they have a favorable and powerful position in the co-authorship network in the investigated area and influence the research process and activities in this area. A total of 145 authors with a minimum number of 20 articles have had scientific participation at a favorable level.

The main existential philosophy of scientometrics is to help scientific policy making. In this regard, many techniques and methods for quantitative and qualitative monitoring and evaluation of various scientific and specialized fields have always been introduced in various fields of study. On the other hand, the presence of researchers in the field of scientific publications is considered one of the ways to strengthen the scientific capital of the country for the purpose of sustainable scientific development, so the application of the results of the present research will provide an objective and real insight to specialists and planners in determining implementation strategies in the field of health and Health and policy making in medical science organizations.