Iran Leadership in World Science Quality 2

Surveys conducted at Scopus show that the growth of citations received by researchers in 2019 compared to 2018 reached about 5%, and based on this, Iran became a leader in science quality and effectiveness growth among world scientific powers. This is a fact that has been achieved by normalizing citations in Scopus in 2019, comparing it with 2018.

Calculating the raw amount of citations is not the right way to measure scientific effectiveness. For this reason, citations are normalized before comparison. The number of citations received varies from fields of study to others, and older articles also have a greater chance of being cited. For example, an article published in 2012 has a greater chance of being cited than an article published in 2020. The difference between subject areas in science must also be taken into account. For example, articles in microbiology receive many times more citations than articles in mathematics. Accordingly, it is best to normalize citations before citation comparisons.

According to Field-Weighted Citation Impact in Scopus database, the articles of Iran in 2005 received about 25% less than the international average citation. This figure has reached 1.13 in 2019, which means that Iranian articles receive 13% more than the international average citation. In 2020, the country's normalized citation rate has increased to 1.25%. This indicates that researchers pay more attention to the quality of scientific publications.

An examination of Iran's global ranking in terms of the normalized citation index over the past 10 years shows that Iran was in 23rd place in 2011, which has gradually improved. In 2017, it has been upgraded to 18th place, in 2019 to 14th place and finally in 2020 to 12th place. This is while Iran position in terms of quantity and volume of scientific publications in the same year is 15. And this indicates more attention and emphasis on quality compared to the quantity of scientific products in recent years.