Analysis and visualization of Iranian scientific activities on thalassemia according to scientometric indicators

Background and aim: Today, scientometrics is the main method of assessing and comparing the scientific publications of countries, universities, scientific institutions, specific subjects and authors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the Iranian scientific outputs on thalassemia based on scientometric indicators. Material and methods: In this scientometric study, the social network analysis was used to investigate the co-authorship, word co-occurrence and collaborative coefficient. The study population included 476 articles on thalassemia, indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) from 2006 to 2016. Excel ،Raver-matrix ،SPSS19، UCINET 6/28، Netdraw 2/141 and VOSviewer were utilized for data analysis based on scientometric indicators. Findings: The growth rate (27.94) suggested that scientific outputs on thalassemia had an increasing trend in the WoS. Mean collaborative coefficient was 0.78, and the findings showed that there was a significant relationship between the number of authors and citations to each paper (p=0.05). The Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.650, indicating a direct and positive relationship among the studied variables. However, the co-authorship network of authors and institutes with density of 0.006 and 0.015 indicated low coherence of researchers' network in the field of thalassemia. Conclusion: In the field of thalassemia, both scientific outputs and scientific cooperation level have increasing trend, but compared to other fields, the collaborative network has no good coherence, and it is a great way to achieve the desired status

Qualitative evaluation of research activities using the same keywords

Background and aim: Various scientometric indicators have been developed for quantitative and qualitative evaluation of scientific output. Each of these indicators has its own weaknesses and strengths. The study aimed at using the keywords as a qualitative evaluation instrument in research of many scholars of Medical Sciences University.  Material and methods: This study was conducted as a cross-sectional study within a 6-year period (2005-2010). The research population included all papers published by faculty members of Medical Science University of Babol who were as the first/corresponding authors with at least 2 papers and these indexed articles in periodicals published in WOS during this period. The data were collected by means of a tailor-made data collection sheet. The repeated or synonym keywords were collected from different papers of an author and were analyzed in terms of repetition for qualitative evaluation of the research of every scholar. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistical indexes and statistical software spss version16.  Findings: During this period, 127 articles have been indexed in WoS database from researchers of this University. in 11 articles of 300 words, 21 repeated words or synonyms were used by 25 researchers who had two or more than two papers. By considering these findings, the overall ratio of articles with repetitive keywords was 16 and the proportion of repeated keywords to whole words was 7. Statistical processing of the data using linear regression indicates an inverse relationship between the number of articles of each author and repeated keywords or synonyms in his/her articles. So, by increasing the number of articles for every author from 2 to 5, the repeated words in per article were decreased to 0/83, 0/77, 0/25 and finally zero, respectively.  Conclusion: low rate of the same keywords and synonyms in the articles of one researcher may be a sign of dispersion and lack of coordination in research activities. Therefore, regarding the coordination and concentration of the subject in scientific activities is very important in assessing the quality of research and researchers

Co-word Analysis of World Scientific Productions in the Field of Religion and Health

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the World Science Productions in the field of religion and health using co-word analysis.The research reviewed scientific documents indexed from 1958 to 2019 on Web of Science (WoS). For analyzing the data and drawing the scientific map, Ravar Matrix and Vosviewer tools were used.The data analysis shows that Iran provided only 1.52 percent of global scientific production in this field with 32 scientific documents, and countries such as the US, UK, and Germany are ahead of the others. The co-word analysis shows that the most important topics include spirituality and health, mental health, and medical ethics. In the past 60 years of studies on the three major religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, the relation of spirituality and health has been one of the most significant topics. The findings suggest that the role of spirituality cannot be ignored in promoting the health of communities.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.3.14.1  

Mapping the Scientific Research on Health Literacy

Introduction: Health literacy includes skills required to make informed personal and social health decisions. Due to the increasing importance of health literacy, it is vital to investigate the quantitative and thematic publication process in this field. This study aims to investigate the publication process and draw a scientific map of articles in health literacy. Methods: The current research is a descriptive-analytical one. Scientometric techniques were used for anlayzing health literacy publications from 2012 to January 23, 2023 in the PubMed database. RStudio and VOSviewer software were used for data analysis. Results: In the 12 years under review, 8,242 documents in the field of health literacy have been published. 27,193 authors and 1,588 journals contributed to the publication of these documents. Seven hundred four authors contributed to single-author papers, and 26,489 contributed to multi-author papers. International participation in this area was 11.95%. Wolf MS, Osborne RH, and Paasche-Orlow MK are the most contributing health literacy researchers. America-China registered the most scientific cooperation pairs. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has published the most health literacy articles among the journals. The research trend in 2013-2014 was toward teaching and educational principles and methods. Conclusion: Researchers in the field of health literacy pay special attention to the issue of scientific cooperation. In the reviewed articles, COVID-19 is one of the prominent topics that coincide with the issue of health literacy

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens

Scientific Production of Iran in the Field of Occupational and Professional Health and Determined Its Level in the Word during 2000-2016

Introduction: The status and role of each country in scientific outputs in specific fields may indicate the potential and its performance in promoting and improving that particular issue. This study aimed to investigate Iranian scientific production in the field of Occupational and Professional Health and determine its level in Region and the World. Methods: This is Survey-Descriptive study with Scientometrics approach. Population study includes 1787 scientific articles and papers in the field of Occupational and Professional health which published and indexed in Scopus database during 2000-2016. We use SPSS, NodeXL and VOSviewer to analysis data and design graphs. Findings: Finding shows that Iranian scientific outputs in the field of Occupational and Professional Health increase from 3 in 2000 to 266 in 2016 and have 34% growth every year. Also we fended that Tehran University of Medical Science and United States as the most important center and co-worker in publishing scientific production. Conclusion Although Iranian scientific production in the recent years have an acceptable increasing, but totally Iranian place of scientific production in the field of Occupational and Professional Health were not suitable in the world. Also the quality of published articles was in medium level. Making policy and Tacking good decision related to growth of quality and quantity of scientific papers by increasing level of scientific collaboration and use all internal potential seems necessary

Analysis the exploratory factor of evaluating indicators for the researchers\' scientific outputs

Background and aim: there are different indexes for evaluation of scientific outputs of scholars. This study aimed at evaluating and analyzing 9 cases of these indexes by using actual data and exploratory factor analysis.  Material and methods: 40 citation reports of researchers was extracted from Web of Science (WoS) and entered into the checklist with the scientific age of researchers and the age of cited papers. Some descriptive and analytic statistics especially exploratory factor analysis were used by SPSS version 19.   Findings: Exploratory factor analysis showed 3 factors with especial values and greater than 1 and with explained variance over 96% in 9 indexes. Factors 1, 2 and 3 explained 44.38%, 28.19%, and 23.48% of variance in correlation coefficient matrix, respectively. M index (with coefficient of 90%) in factor 1, a index (with coefficient of 91%) in factor 2, and h and h2 indexes (with coefficients of 93%) in factor 3 had the highest factor loadings. Correlation coefficients and related comparative diagrams indicated that the same h index among 9 indexes has been more accurate and different in recent years.  Conclusions: As the studied supplemental indexes could not satisfied all limits of h index, scientific society needs a new index which accurately evaluates the quality besides the quantity of individual researchers' scientific outputs