Citations and References to Iranian Scientific Products

One of the most important indicators for examining the qualitative status of science production is based on citation analysis. The basis of this index is based on the number of citations made to different branches of science. Accordingly, various indicators such as citations to articles, normalized citation, H-index, hot papers and highly cited articles. Studies show that Iran scientific activities, along with science production growth at the international level has been growing. The number of citations is one of the indicators for evaluating the quality of science production, although this indicator alone cannot indicate the quality of science, but in any case it is one of the criteria based on the number of citations or references to scientific products. And now it is the basis of qualitative evaluation of scientific journals, universities and research institutes and countries. According to statistics extracted from WoS database, Iran's citation rank has always been increasing during the last 8 years, from 24 in 2012 to 20 in 2015, then 18 in 2018 and finally 16 in 2019.