Information Security from a Scientometric Perspective

During recent years, Information societies are continually confronted with security threats and information vulnerabilities. Literature analysis of major disciplines is one of the key tools available to policymakers of research institutions and organizations. Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analyzing scientific literature. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the research trends of information security in the Middle-East and the world from a scientometric perspective. Descriptive and analytical statistics were used in this study. The Scopus citation database was used to collect the publication data, as the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Therefore, all documents related to "information security" were retrieved and analyzed. The results showed that the majority of scientific publications in the field of information security were produced in the United States of America and China. Among the Middle-Eastern countries, Iran ranked the first in terms of scientific publications in the field of information security while ranked 23th among the countries of the world. It is apparent that paying special attention to the field of information and data security in terms of international scientific collaborations, using knowledge and experiences of the leading, and supporting research and development in this field can improve the quality and quantity of scientific publications in this field. The expertise gathered during the process will prove invaluable and effective in confronting the security threats and vulnerabilities posed to information societies

Information Security from a Scientometric Perspective

During recent years, Information societies are continually confronted with security threats and information vulnerabilities. Literature analysis of major disciplines is one of the key tools available to policymakers of research institutions and organizations. Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analyzing scientific literature. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the research trends of information security in the Middle-East and the world from a scientometric perspective. Descriptive and analytical statistics were used in this study. The Scopus citation database was used to collect the publication data, as the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Therefore, all documents related to "information security" were retrieved and analyzed. The results showed that the majority of scientific publications in the field of information security were produced in the United States of America and China. Among the Middle-Eastern countries, Iran ranked the first in terms of scientific publications in the field of information security while ranked 23th among the countries of the world. It is apparent that paying special attention to the field of information and data security in terms of international scientific collaborations, using knowledge and experiences of the leading, and supporting research and development in this field can improve the quality and quantity of scientific publications in this field. The expertise gathered during the process will prove invaluable and effective in confronting the security threats and vulnerabilities posed to information societies

The Factors Influencing Interlibrary Loan among Iranian Medical Sciences Libraries

Regarding the importance of providing the feasibility of information access for medical library users and the outstanding Interlibrary Loan project among Iranian universities of medical sciences, the current research has been developed to study the factors influencing Interlibrary Loan process among medical sciences libraries in Iran. This study was performed on the all central libraries of medical sciences universities in Iran. Data were collected through five-point Likert scale questionnaires. The questionnaire has been standardized during the study. Factors analysis has been done to extract & regroup the influencing factors. Moreover, the importance of each item was calculated in each group. The relationship between the responders` attitudes and their sex and work experience has been identified using different statistical tests. Results show that Interlibrary Loan process among Iranian medical libraries is influenced by different factors which are classified into four different categories: Technological, Economical, Organizational and Human-related. It seems that the technological factors have the dominant effectiveness. After that, the organizational factors have the second level of importance. Human-related and economical factors are on the third and fourth levels of importance. To promote Interlibrary Loan among Iranian medical libraries, the four mentioned categories should be taken into consider and practice because Interlibrary Loan is a multi-dimensional process, the success of which is indebted to consideration and application of the whole influencing factors and their levels of importance

Research performance of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 1385 (April 2006- March 2007)

BACKGROUND: One of the frequently used measures of research performance of a country or a university is counting the related scientific production. In the present study the number of scientific production including research projects, books, journal articles and conference proceedings published under the name of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences were identified and then compared with those reported by Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education for the year 1384. The purpose of this study was to identify one-year research performance of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences and to show the growth rate of scientific production of this university from 1384 to 1385. METHODS: The present cross-sectional study was carried out by reviewing related official documents and running advanced searches in some of the most important databases. The time limitation was set on 1385 hijri shamsi, which is equal to the beginning of April 2006 till the end of March 2007. RESULTS: During the period of the study, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences published 56 books. The total number of approved research projects was 1080, most of which (61.67%) were descriptive studies. A total of 721 journal articles published by the university researchers of which 146 papers were indexed by ISI, 26 papers were indexed by MEDLINE, 194 papers were indexed by EMBASE, Scopus, Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts and CINAHL, 318 articles were indexed by other databases. Only 37 articles published via non-indexed journals. 74.2% of the articles appeared in domestic journals while only 25.8% published in foreign journals. The total number of national and international conference proceedings was 726. The findings showed a significant increase (nearly 100%) in all kinds of scientific productions compared to those published in 1384 except the published books. CONCLUTIONS: The present study indicates that despite suffering from limitations in annual research budgets and facilities, research performance of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences has increased appreciably during the last year

Webometric Study on Iranian Universities of Medical Sciences

Numerous studies have been published on Webometrics regarding the influence of websites on each other and the reliability of Web Impact Factor (WIF) as a quantitive tool to show the visibility and impact of websites. The purpose of this survey is to study the impact of 40 universities covered by Iranian Ministry of Health on the Web. Accordingly, total number of web pages and links into each university were counted by advances search features of AltaVista search engine. The overall, inlink and self–link WIFs for each website were calculated. Finally the universities ranked according to these parameters. The results show that although Tehran University of Medical Sciences is first in the number of web pages. The overall results suggest that Iranian universities of medical sciences are not well known internationally due to their poor scholarly publications and focus on Persian language in their web pages

Inter-Library Loan in Medical Sciences Universities of the Country: Challenges and Effective Factors

Present study has been conducted regarding the importance of medical researchers’ access to information resources and non-arrangement of interlibrary-loan project in medical sciences universities in the country. Its purpose is to determine effective factors on interlibraryloan in these universities. This study has used descriptive survey method. Results show that technological factors are the most effective factors on interlibrary-loan and organizational factors are located at the second grade. Humane and economical factors are third and fourth effective factors on interlibrary-loan in medical sciences universities of the country, consequently

Research performance in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences: evaluation of scientific productivity

Research performance in Iran has increased appreciably during the recent years especially in regard to the output of scientific publication. This development can be explicitly seen in the basic sciences including medicine and its subspecialties. Isfahan University of Medical Sciences plays a determining role in this development. The purpose of this survey is to evaluate quantitatively the scientific productivity of this university from the beginning (1985) till the end of 2006. The study was conducted according to the data recorded in the web Of Science (WOS) and Medline. The findings indicate a significant increase in scientific production indexed both in Medline and WOS after 2000 which is greatly due to the paper award system set up by Iranian Ministry of Health; development of the university network; delivering internet services to the academic staff; accessibility of medical databases, electronic journals and full text collections; and finally university advanced workshops on paper writing all started in the year 2000

Bioinformatics, Health Informatics & Medical Informatics: Who searches for what?

Google Trends is a Google Labs product which provide insights into broad search patterns. In other words, Google Trends allows you to see what the world is searching for. It analyzes Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for a specific term over the time. It shows the news reference volume & search reference volume graphs as well as the top cities, regions and languages searching a specific term. Using Google Trends, we studied the people's patterns and habits in searching the terms "Bioinformatics", "Health Informatics" & "Medical Informatics". The results show that the users search "Bioinformatics" more than the other two terms. The most searches for "Bioinformatics" were done from India, Kenya, Bangladesh, Singapore & Pakistan. Checking the most frequent languages used for these searches, we determined top 5 languages as Hindi, Korean, Greek, English and Thai which once again confirmed the role of India in this field. Doing the same process for "Health Informatics" as the other keyword, we identified Ireland, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada as the top countries in searching this term; London Colney, Halifax, Dublin, Sydney and London as the top cities; and English, Chinese, Icelandic, Hindi and Czech as the most frequent languages. Considering "Medical Informatics", the most searches have done from Greece, Iran, India, Taiwan and Philippines. The overall results suggest that "Bioinformatics" are more searched than "Health Informatics" and "Medical Informatics". Different countries are interested in different fields of these terms. The dominant search term is "Bioinformatics" and the dominant country in searching this term is India. UK, New Zealand and Australia are more interested in "Health Informatics" while, Iran and Turkey are considerable in searching the term "Medical Informatics". The search patterns of cities may different form the related countries

Health Information Pioneers in the Middle East

Middle East is an ancient large area with some wealthy countries possessing rich underground resources like gas & oil. The countries of this region are mostly considered as developing countries. The overall contribution to the world science by these countries is limited especially in producing scientific publications on health topics. Although most of these countries have some serious health problems, but the annual number of scientific papers published by the researchers of each country doesn't meet the healthcare needs of their populations. In this study the total scientific papers published by the researchers of all Middle East countries and indexed in Medline PubMed database, through the period 1988-2006 have been extracted. The number of papers produced by each country has been identified and adjusted for their number of researchers, universities, GDPs & also their populations. Moreover, the rate of citations and the number of citations per article were studied. Then the trend of paper indexing in Medline and also its adjusted trend is considered & compared. Over the past two decades, the number of papers produced by the Middle East countries has remained flat or declined, albeit with two striking exceptions which are Turkey & Iran. Turkey's publication rate per year has grown from around 500 in 1988 to more than 9000 in 2006. The other rising star is Iran, which from a low base of less than 100 articles per year a decade ago now produces nearly 4000. Both countries have eclipsed Egypt, previously the most prolific of all Middle East states in the scientific Publishing. Turkey, although not rich in oil, but has been the most scientifically successful country in the Middle East since 2003. It seems that there is a significant difference among the Middle East countries in producing scientific publications on health topics

Scientific Production of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Scientific Production is one of the frequently used measures of research performance of a country, a region or a university. In the present study, the number of approved research projects, congress proceedings, journal articles and books published by the researchers of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2006 were identified and then compared with those of 2005. Methods: We performed the present cross-sectional study by searching medical databases and assessing the related documents produced in the year 2006. Then the results were compared with the same scientific production in 2005. Results: The findings showed 100% increase in published indexed and non-indexed journal articles, a growth of 99% in approved research projects and 94% in congress proceedings in 2006 compared with those in 2005. Conclusion: The study indicated a significant growth in research performance of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences through 2006