Iran Leadership in World Science Quality 4

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.

With the elimination of self-citation, Iran's rank has increased increase from 14 to 18 in 2019 and also from 13 to 16 in 2020. In this case, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Taiwan, South Korea and Turkey are ahead of Iran. Articles in Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom receive citations of between 1% to 33% above the international average even after self-citation has been removed.

Despite these results, studies show that in comparison with the growth rate of normalized citations in 2019 and 2018, with the elimination of self-citation, Iran still ranks first in terms of growth of science quality in the world among the top scientific powers. The corresponding growth rate was about 1.5%. Poland is placing next with a growth of a little less than 1.5%.