Barriers to Research Implementation in Medical Sciences in Iran from the Viewpoints of Faculty Members, Researchers, and Students: A Systematic Review

Introduction: The importance of research and knowledge production is critical worldwide. Therefore, the number of researchers and published articles as well as the volume of investment in research is considered the indicators of development in any country. Accordingly, the most important factor in the progress and prosperity of research is to recognize the challenges and barriers. Various studies have been carried out at the Universities of Medical Sciences in order to identify the barriers to knowledge production regarding the stakeholders’ viewpoints. Therefore, this study aimed to identify barriers to knowledge production from the viewpoint of faculty members, research experts, and students in Iran.   Materials & Methods: This systematic review was conducted utilizing the articles and documents on Iranian web sites (i.e., Magiran, Iran medex, SID, and Medlib) as well as foreign databases (i.e., Google scholar, PubMed, and Scopus) without any time limit. Moreover, the keywords in the titles of articles were employed in the search process.   Findings: Totally, 16 articles and one documentary were identified in the search process. Out of all, 13 and 3 articles compared the viewpoints of faculty members and the views of faculty members with research experts, respectively. According to faculty members’ viewpoints lack of time due to heavy workload, policies to encourage researchers, adequate funding, appropriate promotion system for faculty members, and human resource shortages were the main research barriers in medical sciences. On the other hand, the research experts indicated the lack of teamwork culture and existence of defects in goals and programs as the most important challenges in research implementation. Moreover, lack of research priorities, motivation for research, cooperation with researchers, and adequate funding were the main obstacles in viewpoints of students.   Discussion & Conclusions: According to the results, the faculty members share same viewpoints regarding research barriers despite the variety in locations geographically and diversity in data collection tools. Generally, lack of research funding was considered as the main research barrier. Moreover, the complexity in research approval processes ranked the second main challenge confronting the researchers in the field of medical sciences.