A Bibliometric Analysis of Toxicology Publications of Iran and Turkey in ISI Web of Science

Background: Web of Science (WoS) is an online academic citation index provided by Thomson Reuters which supplies valuable bibliometric information for comparing impact of specific author, organization, or country in science production. The aim of this study was to compare toxicology publications of Iran and Turkey indexed in WoS from bibliometric point of view. Methods: The WoS database was queried based on keywords “Iran” and “Turkey” separately in the “Address” field and refined by “Toxicology” as a category. All records were transferred to Microsoft Excel® application. The dataset were analyzed from different perspectives, such as publication years, number of references and citations, authorship pattern, publications types, affiliated organizations, core subject areas and journals.Results: There were 1178 and 2240 publications that met the criteria during 1993-2011 for Iran and Turkey, respectively. Less than 2% of authors had published more than 25% of all toxicology papers in both countries. The average number of citation per article was about 3.48 for Iranian and 6.73 for Turkish papers. By the time of the analysis, 54.3% of Iranian and 31.6% of Turkish articles had not received any citation. Conclusion: This analysis reveals that top Iranian toxicologists had a better performance than their Turkish counterparts but overall authorship pattern was well-distributed among Turkish researchers and organizations. If Iranian authors desire to achieve first rank of toxicology articles in the Middle East region by 2025, they must try to increase the quantity and quality of their international publications.