Iran has attained the top spot in the research impact factor among Muslim countries, according to the Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC).
Director of ISC Mohammad Javad Dehqani says information collected from Essential Science Indicator’s (ESI) database reveals Iran has captured 21% of all citations obtained by Muslim countries, coming first among Islamic nations, reported ISNA.
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal.
The index is used to determine the relative importance of a journal within its own field. Journals with higher impact factors are considered more important than those with lower ones.
According to ISC’s head, the number of highly cited research papers produced in Iran has gone from 47 in 2008 to 411 in 2017, indicating an annual 21.24% growth rate, the highest among Muslim nations.
Engineering at the Forefront
“The highest frequency of citations belongs to the engineering field with a 6.35% share. Scientists engaged in engineering generate the most influential research papers among all fields.”
Engineering is respectively followed by chemistry, physics, agricultural science, clinical medicine and mathematics.
Dehqani gave an account of the technicalities of the world of research, saying that around 1% of research papers receive 18% of citations.
Data from the 10-year period reveals Iranian academics have recorded 1,775,773 citations overall, making up 21.2% of Muslim countries’ citations.
Ranked below Iran are countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Egypt, Pakistan, Tunisia, Indonesia, Nigeria and United Arab Emirates.
Academic Growth
This is not the first time Iran has made news as the leading country among Muslim nations in terms of academic growth. In ESI’s previous report, Iran was first in producing scientific material in terms of quantity and accounted for 22% of all Muslim countries’ scientific products.
Dehqani says in the past ten years, Iran’s scientific community’s high-impact papers have boomed in terms of number and quality.
“The figures attest to increasing citations and improving quality of content produced by Iranian scientists and researchers.”
Iranian scholars have set an upward trend in knowledge production in recent years. Back in March, six local universities were present in Quacquarelli Symonds 2018 subject rankings.
The QS World University Rankings by Subject surveys the world’s top universities in individual subject areas.
The universities of Iran on the subject rankings list included University of Tehran and Sharif University of Technology, as well as the medical universities of Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad and Tabriz.
