Growth Rate in Science and Technology 16%

Iran’s growth rate in science and technology output reached 16% over the past four years, said Institute for Scientific Information supervisor Mohammad Javad Dehghani.

“According to a recent ISI report on the growth rates in science and technology among nations in the world in 2014 and 2015, Iran had a 16% growth rate over the past four years, having been placed among the world’s leading countries in terms of scientific production,” he said, iribnews.ir reported.

The average science production growth rate globally (measured by the number of articles registered at the ISI database) stood at 6% over the same period.  

“Iran, Turkey, and Poland are the three countries who have had a two-point growth in science production over the year 2015 compared with 2014 while Italy and Brazil each had a one-point growth,” Dehghani noted.

According to the ISI news agency, Iran increased its academic publishing output nearly tenfold from 1996 to 2004, and has been ranked first globally in terms of output growth rate (followed by China with a 3-fold increase). Iran, China, India and Brazil are the only developing countries among 31 nations that account for 97.5% of the world’s total scientific productivity. The remaining 162 developing countries contribute less than 2.5% of the world’s scientific output.

According to Thomson Reuters, Iran has demonstrated a remarkable growth in science and technology over the past one decade, increasing its science and technology output fivefold from 2000 to 2008, producing 1.4% of the world’s total output in 2004–2008.

By 2008, Iranian science and technology output accounted for 1.02% of the world’s total output; 25% of scientific articles published in 2008 by Iran were international co-authorships.

The top five countries coauthoring with Iranian scientists are the US, UK, Canada, Germany and France.