International scientific collaboration among Iranian researchers during 1998-2007

Purpose – The paper aims to investigate the rate of Iranian researchers collaboration with their colleagues in other countries in science citation index (SCI). In addition, it seeks to investigate the visibility of publications by Iranian researchers, and particularly the visibility of papers resulting from international collaboration. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs the survey research method to answer research questions. Any publication recorded in the SCI database from 1998 to 2007 with at least one Iranian author was recognized and transferred to a database in Excel. The total records were 33,813. This number mostly includes articles, letters, notes, and reviews. Findings – The results showed that Iranian researchers have had scientific collaboration with 115 countries, and that their numbers have increased between 1998 and 2007. The results also showed that the number of domestic articles per year was 2-3.5 times more than international ones. Investigating international collaboration in different subject areas revealed that geosciences had the biggest number of publications co-authored internationally. Iran’s main partners were the USA, Canada, and UK, respectively. European researchers were the main counterparts of Iranian researchers. In addition, Iranian researchers had mostly co-published with their colleagues in advanced countries. Among Iranian universities and research institutions, the University of Tehran had the highest collaboration at the international level. The results revealed that the average number of citations received by international co-authored publications was more than those received by domestic co-authored publications. Originality/value – The paper shows the situation of international collaboration among Iranian researchers and the impact of publications resulting from international collaboration.