Collaboration in Iranian Scientific Publications

This study looks at international collaboration in Iranian scientific publications through the ISI Science Citation Index® (SCI) for the years 1995–1999, inclusive. These results are compared to and contrasted with the earlier findings for the periods covering 1985–1994 (Osareh & Wilson 2000). The results of Iran’s increasing productivity over a 15-year pe-riod are presented. Iran doubled its output in the first two five-year periods and increased 2.8-fold from the second to the third five-year period. The rise in Iran’s scientific pub-lication output is due mainly to factors such as the ending of the war, better economic conditions, recent changes in the Iranian government’s policy, basic changes in the political environment brought about by the Reformers, expansion of the Iranian presses for national publications, and the recent return of a large number of students trained overseas through government scholarships. External changes also account for the increased productivity, e.g., the acceptance of three Ira-nian source journals by the SCI, increased access to inter-national databases through the Internet and better electronic communication facilities for international collaboration. One of the most important and significant factors that caused this dramatic rise seems to be the government’s research policies in the last few years. Since 1999, the Iran Science, Research and Technology Ministry, has encouraged research-ers to publish their non-Farsi language articles in highly ranked international scientific journals, for example, by giv-ing prizes to researchers who publish their articles in ISI-ranked journals