Study of the Self-archival Pattern Among Iranian Authors: A Comparison Between the Scopes of Science and Social Sciences

This research is devoted to find out the level of self-archival pattern among Iranian researchers with high rate of publications, based upon the ISI citation indices in the scopes of science and social sciences. This research is a descriptive survey based on observation. The necessary data was obtained through observing the websites of the 80 Iranian researchers with highest number of publications, in four fields of science (chemistry, biology, mathematics, and computer sciences and information systems) and four fields of social sciences (social sciences, economics, psychology, and management). Excel software was utilized for data analysis. According to results of the research, the Iranian researchers with high number of publications are rarely familiar with the concept of self-archival pattern, such that among the four fields of science, the researchers with highest number of publications in mathematics had the highest level of self-archiving (3.25%) during their research. Furthermore, the study revealed that the researchers with highest number of publications in social sciences took no measures for self-archiving. Besides, the ratio of possible self-archiving to the real self-archiving is remarkable in all the mentioned fields. The highest level of possible self-archiving among the science fields related to biology, while the lowest level of it pertained to computer sciences and information systems; however, the least difference between the possible self-archiving and the real self-archiving was observed in computer sciences and information systems. Moreover, the highest level of possible self-archiving among the science fields corresponded to economics.Originality/Value: Though self-archiving has been among the most effective approaches of information dissemination, it seems that this concept has not been considerably employed by Iranian researchers with high number of publications. The results of this study provide an opportunity for researchers to get acquainted with this concept as well as the status of self-archiving in the mentioned fields and give new insights for making the scientific publications accessible.