Evaluating the status of agricultural articles of Iranian researchers at the Scopus citation database based on the Hirsch index

Background and aim: Today, the use of scientometric methods to evaluate the scientific outputs of researchers in various fields has been highly regarded and the Hirsch index (h-index) is one of the most important scientometric indices due to the simultaneous measurement of quantity and quality of scientific outputs. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the status of Iranian agricultural articles at the Scopus citation database based on the h-index. Material and methods: This applied study was performed using a scientometric method. The research population consisted of 4037 agricultural articles produced by Iranian researchers from 2010 to 2016, which were extracted from Scopus. Excel software and SPSS 16 were used to draw tables and analyze the data, respectively. Moreover, the Spearman’s correlation coefficient and Pearson test were applied to answer the research hypotheses. Findings: In this period, 4037 agricultural articles of 157 Iranian researchers were indexed at Scopus, of which the largest was in 2011. The Advances in Environmental Biology Journal had the highest number of articles (237) and the Bioresource Technology Journal had the highest h-index (19). The results of Spearman's correlation coefficient showed that there was a significant relationship between the h-index and number of articles (P-value <0.05). Conclusion: Iran in the agricultural field is ranked 3rd place in the Middle East and 42th in the world based on h-index. Although Iran has been able to gain stable place in production of agricultural articles, it has not been successful in the region and world in citing its articles and h-index as well as further efforts are needed in this regard.