The influence of international scientific collabortaion on the citation impact of Iranian universities and ways to enhance it

This research aims to 1) assess the rate of growth of a country's international scientific collaborations and its impact on its scientific impact compared to other countries in the world, 2) depict the status of universities and research centers with higher scientific output in the country in this regard, and 3) provide strategies for making research with international collaboration more effective.Globally, the share of internationally collaborative articles is growing at a relatively high pace, and Iran is no exception to this trend. Although this category of articles, on average, receives higher citations compared to other articles, this rule does not apply universally. One of the effective factors in increasing the citation impact of articles is the composition of the research team.Scientometric methods were employed. Data from international documents from Iran and the world over the past 15 years were analyzed based on the databases of InCites and Web of Science from Clarivate Analytics.The research findings indicated that the rate of growth of international scientific collaborations, while accelerating in recent years, has not yet kept pace with the country's scientific development. Although internationally collaborative articles have played a key role in Iran's scientific imapct, the impact of internationally collaborative articles needs improvement compared to other leading scientific powers worldwide. The attention of universities and research centers to the development of international interactions significantly affects the increase in their scientific impact. Some universities and research centers in the country have been more successful in developing internationally scientific collaborations, but they have not fully utilized the capacity of scientific collaboration for scientific impact purposes. The impact level of collaborators, the level of productivity, and the number of internationally collaborative articles are key factors that effectively increase the scientific impact of articles resulting from international collaborations.To elevate the level of scientific impact in the country, it is necessary to take a strategic approach to the selection of collaborators. Research groups composed of researchers with a higher citation impact, higher productivity, and greater international collaboration have a significant effect on the number of citations received by research resulting from effective collaboration. Therefore, changes in regulations that support international collaborations, raising awareness among policymakers and researchers regarding the impact of selecting collaborators on research impact, and the deployment of matching tools will lead to a greater utilization of international collaborations for the advancement of scientific impact.