Background: Scientometrics is one of the bibliometrics subsets aiming to study the status of scientific development of scientific and research institutes. This study aimed to investigate the scientific status of orthopedic departments in different universities of Iran using the national scientometrics system of the Ministry of Health in Iran.
Methods: This cross-sectional study investigated the researchers and orthopedic departments in different universities of Iran based on the data from the scientometrics system of the Ministry of Health in Iran until the beginning of 2021. All researchers and publications related to orthopedics, as well as the relationship of these researchers, have been studied part-time and full-time. The number of publications, indexing level, academic degree, and academic position has been also registered and examined through the scientometrics system.
Results: This study included 280 researchers from different universities in Iran. The mean number of the published articles was 20.6±19.8. The highest number of faculty members were from Iran (n=27; 9.64%), Shahid Beheshti (n=26; 9.28%), Tehran (n=25; 9.28%), as well as Mashhad and Shiraz Universities of Medical Sciences (n=18; 6.42%) in descending order. The overall mean values of the H- and G-index were determined at 5.85±2.7 and 9.3±4.2, respectively. Furthermore, the number of citations per published article was obtained at 6.7±1.3. It should be mentioned that Mashhad University of Medical Sciences obtained the highest H-index (9.6) and G-index (10.6), respectively.
Conclusion: The scientific productions and publications of the Iranian orthopedic academic institutions were similar to those of the international scientific institutes in terms of H-index and number of citations per published article. It is worth mentioning that Mashhad University of Medical Sciences was the leader in this regard.
Keywords: Evaluation; Medical research; Research performance; Scientometry.