The impact factor-based quality assessment of biomedical research institutes in Iran: effect of impact factor normalization by subject.

BACKGROUND The journal impact factor is increasingly employed to evaluate the quality of scientific research. This is in contrary to its critical limitations, e.g., its marked variation across scientific disciplines. This study was conducted to describe, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, the contribution of Iranian universities and research institutes to biomedical publications in 2004 and to examine the possible effect of impact factor normalization by subject on their rankings. METHODS The Iranian biomedical articles were recruited from Thomson Science Citation Index Expanded and PubMed databases according to Thomson Scientific subject categorization of journals. Three subject-normalized impact factors were employed: rank-normalized impact factor, journal to field impact score, and standardized impact factor. RESULTS Tehran and Shiraz Universities of Medical Sciences and University of Tehran were the top three institutes regarding the sum of impact factor in 2004. On the basis of the mean crude impact factor, Sharif University of Technology, University of Shiraz, and Baqiyatollah University were ranked as the first to third. However, the subject normalization of impact factor made some considerable changes in impact factor-based rankings of research institutes. CONCLUSION The Iranian scientific community and science development policy makers are recommended to employ subject-normalized impact factor, rather than crude impact factor, in quality assessment of biomedical research held in various academic and research institutes.