A Survey on the Contribution of Iran to the Biomedical Researches of the World: An Analysis of PubMed Papers during 1997 to 2006*

Different studies were so far carried out on the scientific productions of Iran within the biomedical field. None of these studies were investigated this issue in a long term period and therefore, the present study was carried out in order to determine the contribution of Iran to the biomedical researches of the world based on the analysis of PubMed papers during 1997 to 2006. In this survey, the PubMed search engine was investigated through the years 1997-2006. By adopting a two-stage search strategy, all the articles divided into two categories i.e. those articles which their first or corresponding author was/was not from Iran. In the next step, the populations of Iran and world in three periods i.e. 1995, 2000 and 2005 were determined using the United Nation's website. All data were entered into Excel software and the number of articles in each year was separately divided by the number of articles in baseline (1997). Similarly, the number of populations in two mentioned periods was separately divided by the number of populations in baseline (1995). Although the growth percentage of both Iran and world publications were continuously increased compared to baseline year, the growth was much higher for Iranian publications (1.65% for the world vs. 19.38% for Iran in 2006 compared with 1997). Similarly, the growth percentage of both Iran and world populations were also continuously increased compared to baseline year; however, the growth was higher for world populations (1.14% for the world vs. 1.12% for Iran in 2005 compared with 1995). The growing trend of Iranian publications in comparison with world publications within the recent decade is an important issue seems that does not relate to the growing trend of Iranian populations. Nevertheless, the comparison between the qualities of Iranian scientist's publications with world scientist's publications is another important issue that needs to be studied further.