Contribution of iranian scholars to medical sciences: A holistic overview of 140-years publication

Background: This study investigated the trends in the scientific output of Iran published in PubMed indexed journals. To the best of our knowledge, there was no previous study to examine the Iranian scientific output in all fields of health and biomedical sciences. Methods: Using a bibliometric approach, we tracked 140 years (between 1877 and 2016) of Iranian scientific productions in PubMed. The journals which papers widely published over them were analyzed. The metadata of journals was extracted from Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and Scimago Journal & Country Rank. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data was elaborated from the World Bank to evaluate the relationship with research output. We used Pearson's correlation coefficient at p<0.01 significance level and reported the data in a scatterplot. Results: We identified 106 226 documents produced by Iranian authors in journals indexed in PubMed since 1877. The number of papers climbed dramatically in 2000 and afterward, and this was consistent with the country's GDP. Although the scientific contribution of Iranian researchers is remarkable, 67 of papers (26 978 out of 106 226) were published in local Journals categorized into quartile 3 and 4 of WoS and Scopus. The study shows that GDP growth has had a positive influence on publication output (r=0.738, p