The Publication Trend of Internal Medicine in Iran, the Middle East and the World: A 10-Year Bibliometric Analysis

Purpose: This study sought to evaluate the scientific publications of Iranian researchers in the field of internal medicine as well as to compare them with those of the countries of the Middle East and the world within 2009-2018. Design/methodology/approach: In this bibliometric study, the Scopus database was used. All papers published in the past ten years by researchers from Iran, the Middle East and the world in the field of internal medicine were included in the study. Data analysis and drawing of scientific maps were performed using Excel and VOS viewer software. Findings: The number of scientific papers of Iranian researchers in the field of internal medicine has been ever-growing in the last ten years. In this respect, Tehran University of Medical Sciences is the most productive university in Iran with 4629 documents. The results of the visualization of the key thematic subject areas of internal medicine based on the keywords and terminologies of the title and abstracts showed that epidemiological studies were the most important subject areas of this field. A study of the contribution of countries in the world and the Middle East in scientific publications in the field of internal medicine showed that the United States was the world\u27s top country with 438,392 documents and published 36.99% of the world\u27s papers on internal medicine. It should be noted that amongst the Middle East countries, Turkey and Iran have the highest share of scientific publications so that about 56 percent of Middle East scientific publications are published by these two countries. Results: In the last decade, Iranian Journal of Internal Medicine has had a growing trend in terms of number of scientific publications. But most of the papers of Iranian researchers were published in the third and fourth quartiles. Accordingly, it is recommended that Iranian researchers prioritize the publication of articles in the first and second quarter journals and select these journals for publication. Practical implications: Evaluating the process of scientific publications and identifying key thematic subject areas of internal medicine based on keywords and terms of the titles and abstracts can be useful for researchers in this field and help them understand research trends and locate hot spots and research gaps. Originality/Value: Internal medicine are one of the important fields of medicine. This study provides an overview of the status of scientific publications of internal medicine at three national, regional and international levels