Transplantation research in Iran: a bibliometric study.

BACKGROUND

Scientific articles are indicators of research interest and efforts in every country. The aim of the current study is to describe the characteristics of the transplantation-related research efforts with respect to the domestic published works in Iran between 1993 and 2003.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In a descriptive design, we searched IranMedex (Iranian database for indexing medical articles; available at: http//www.iranmedex.com) for all the biomedical articles published between 1993 and 2003 in 91 Iranian journals. The search was conducted using "transplantation" and "transplant" as key words. A printed copy of the references was reviewed individually so as to identify the transplanted organ, study design, number of authors, and type of article.

RESULTS

Among 11371 articles, 545 (4.8%) were related to transplantation. An increasing trend was observed in the number of publications from 1993 to 2003. Most articles were published in Farsi (90%). The most frequently published articles were original articles (84.4%). The main subjects of were kidney (61.7%), followed by liver (12%) and bone marrow transplantation (10.8%). Cornea was the topic of research in only 3% of the papers. Of all manuscripts, 9.5% consisted of clinical trials. The mean number of authors was 3.6 +/- 2.2 (1 to 14).

CONCLUSIONS

Iranian researchers seem to be interested in the topic of transplantation; however, some fields of transplantation are neglected. This pooling of valuable information can be used by other countries, especially by researchers from the Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation region. Such databases could form an invaluable network for an exchange of experience in the region to solve common problems.