Investigating Association between Social influence, Productivity, and Performance in Co-author Network of Researchers in Medical Ethics

The purpose of this research is to investigate association between social influence, productivity, and performance among researchers of medical ethics field.  This research was done using common methods in scientometric studies with the method of co-author and network analysis. The statistical population of the study consists of all articles published in journals in the field of medical ethics, which were indexed in the database of web of science in the period of 1978-2017. A total of 14,231 articles and 20,845 researchers were surveyed. Data analysis was done using UciNet and SPSS softwares. Research findings based on the social influence that calculated for each researcher. The study of relationship between social influence and performance showed that there is positive correlation between performance and degree centrality. However, there is a negative correlation between performance and closeness and betweenness centrality. Also, the relation between social influence and productivity showed that there is a positive and significant correlation between social influence and productivity indices. The results showed that the researcher who have a good status in terms of performance, have a high social impact. In addition, researchers who have a high degree centrality are in a favorable position in terms of productivity and performance.