Analysis of the descriptive and content structure of scientific productions of Iranian researchers in the field of civil engineering in the Web of Science

Civil engineering is one of the oldest and most extensive engineering professions. The aim of this study was to analyze the descriptive and content structure of scientific productions of Iranian researchers in the field of civil engineering in the Web of Science (WoS) during 2013-2022.

The statistical population of this quantitative, applied, descriptive and analytical study consisted all scientific productions of Iranian scientists in the field of civil engineering in WoS during the years 2013-2022. This study was carried out by the scientometric method, using VOSviewer software to draw scientific maps and Excel and SPSS software to analyze the data. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to determine whether the data were normal or not, and the research hypotheses were tested with the Spearman correlation coefficient.

Most documents were published in 2021. Totally, 99.9% of the documents are written in English. The leading Iranian authors in this field are Ali Kaveh with the highest number of scientific productions (188), Mehdi Shariati with the highest number of citations (4917 citations) and Omid Bozorg-Haddad with the highest total linkage strength (230). Optimization (total linkage strength=689) was the most important in the network and the degree of centrality. There was also a significant relationship between the number of documents and the number of citations of the participating universities/organizations in the production of scientific documents in the field of civil engineering in the WoS (p< 0.001).

There was a significant relationship between the number of documents and the number of citations of Iranian authors in the field of civil engineering in the WoS. Moreover, Islamic Azad University is located in the center of the density map of the co-authorship network of universities and institutions in the field of civil engineering, indicating the importance of this university in the co-authorship network of institutions.