Publication on Health Policy Worldwide from 1898 to 2013: Identifying Position of Iran

BACKGROUND As the field of health policy continues to evolve and grow, it is important to examine the trend of scientific output generated in this domain. Scientific outputs can also be used to evaluate academic progress of the field in each country or over a given period of time. OBJECTIVE Aim of this study is to depict trend of publication on topics of health policy world-wide and to highlight contribution of Iran in this field. METHODS The web of science database was used to identify all relevant published papers worldwide The search was conducted on documents published from January 1898 to December 2013. The criteria for retrieval were set to be "health policy" in topics. Then the retrieved papers were filtered in terms of distinct years, countries, source titles, and languages. RESULTS Findings revealed an increasing trend of publication on health policy over past decades. English was the first most dominant language of publication. USA had the highest number of publication with 5347 papers; however Switzerland ranked first after considering publication number in terms of countries' population. BMJ was the source title with highest number of publication on topics of health policy. Number of publication by Iranian authors was 87 from January 1898 to December 2013. CONCLUSION It seems discipline of health policy has started its evolution worldwide long time ago while Iran is in its initial phases.