Standards for Iranian Hospital Libraries: Why do Hospital Libraries Need to be Standardized?

The objective of developing the National Standard for Hospital Libraries (NSHL) is to present an efficient tool to replace scientific methods with traditional ones. The standards should be designed to be used as a comprehensive guide for librarians working in hospitals in various fields. Various standards are currently being developed for national, public, and academic libraries. Despite the activity of more than 200 educational and medical centers and a large number of public and private medical centers in Iran, there was no comprehensive standard that could meet this group of libraries' expectations. Therefore, the development of a standard for hospital libraries began based on national research. Finally, this standard was prepared in four chapters, including mission and organization, strategic planning, resources management, and service management. This standard was handed over to the Iranian National Standards Organization and the Deputy for Research and Technology of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education to be available to users and stakeholders. The NSHL is a comprehensive guideline for establishing and developing hospital libraries and applies to all public and private hospital libraries, both

Achievements of the Cochrane Iran Associate Centre: Lessons Learned

Healthcare decision-making is a process that mainly depends on evidence and involves increasing numbers of stakeholders, including the consumers. Cochrane evidence responds to this challenge by identifying, appraising, integrating and synthesizing high-quality evidence. Recently, a collaborative effort has been initiated in Iran with Cochrane to establish a representative local entity. A variety of multifaceted interventions were conducted according to Cochrane’s strategy to 2020, such as producing evidence, making Cochrane evidence accessible, advocating for evidence and building an effective and sustainable organization. In this report, the authors present the two and half year performance and achievements of Cochrane Iran based on a comprehensive and systematic approach. This case might be an example of health diplomacy, which is initiated by a successful international collaboration and proceed with recognizing the importance of adherence to the strategic action plans and goals

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

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

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

Isfahan University of Medical Sciences: Two Decades of Scientific Achievements

Introduction: Several studies indicate a significant growth in research activities and scientific achievements in Iran during recent years. Isfahan University of Medical Sciences as a main university has had a special situation in this regard. The aim of this study was to determine science productions of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences since its establishment, during1985 till 2007. Methods: This was a descriptive study, performed based on the data retrieved from ISI Web of Science and Medline databases. Results: Researchers of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences indexed 313 scientific article in Medline and 350 in ISI. Among all schools and centers affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, school of medicine was ranked in the first place regarding scientific productions indexed in the 2 mentioned databases. Conclusion: This study demonstrates a significant growth in producing scientific articles in this university especially after the year 2000. Establishing the rewarding system for article writers, developing and expanding the infrastructures for internet, providing on-line services in this university, subscribing scientific databases and electronic journals, and running workshops in research methodology and scientific writing were among the most important factors causing this progress

Science production in Iran: The scenario of Iranian medical journals

In Iran, the number of published articles has increased significantly in the basic and applied sciences including medicine and its subspecialties during the recent years. The present study reviewed Iranian science production in medicine, focusing on Iranian medical journals and assessing the current status of Iranian medical journals in several information databases. The study revealed that only a few number of Iranian biomedical journals were indexed by Web of Science, Medline, Scopus and Biological abstract, but most of them have been covered by Index Copernicus and Index Medicus for Eastern Mediterranean Region. Observing some important factors such as journal's basic publishing standards may increase the number of Iranian medical journals indexed by reputable information databases and improve Iranian contribution to the world science

Academic contribution to the scientific productivity: a case study

In Iran, the number of published articles has increased significantly in the basic and applied sciences including medicine and its subspecialties during the recent years. The present study reviewed Iranian science production in medicine, focusing on Iranian medical journals and assessing the current status of Iranian medical journals in several information databases. The study revealed that only a few number of Iranian biomedical journals were indexed by Web of Science, Medline, Scopus and Biological abstract, but most of them have been covered by Index Copernicus and Index Medicus for Eastern Mediterranean Region. Observing some important factors such as journal's basic publishing standards may increase the number of Iranian medical journals indexed by reputable information databases and improve Iranian contribution to the world science