A Scientometric Assessment of the Medical Universities Performance: Two Decades Analysis from 1998 to 2018

Introduction: Given the key role of universities and higher education institutes in the
social and economic development of countries, it is necessary to evaluate their performance regularly with appropriate methods and measures. Since research and science production are among the essential functions of universities, measurement of scientific outputs is an important part of university performance evaluation. The aim of this study was to rank the Iranian medical universities by scientometric indicators.
Methods: One way to evaluate the scientific outputs is to use one of many scientometric
indicators defined over the years for quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the researchers. This approach can also be expanded for evaluation at the university level. In the descriptive
survey presented in this paper, 152597 scientific articles published by the authors affiliated
with 50 Iranian medical universities were investigated. The scientific output data extracted
from the Scopus database of each university were analyzed separately using the cumulative
number of scientific papers, number of citations, citation impact, h-index, m-parameter,
and g-index. The universities were then ranked according to each indicator. This study is
an applied research based on the results. The sample number in this study was all scientific
output of the universities studied.
Results: Among the studied universities, Tehran University of Medical Science ranked first
in terms of cumulative number of scientific papers, citations, h-index, and g-index, Alborz
University of Medical Science ranked the first in terms of m-parameter, and Arak University
of Medical Sciences ranked the first in terms of citation impact.
Conclusion: The obtained rankings were compared with the results of Islamic World Science
Citation Database (ISC) ranking system. This comparison showed that the rankings of Iranian medical universities based on cumulative number of papers, number of citations, and h-index were strongly correlated with the results of ISC ranking system.