Top

Globalization and Health

Published in:

Open Access 01-12-2019 | Environmental Medicine | Research

The status of international collaborations in compilation of Iranian scientific articles on environmental health engineering

Authors: Aram Tirgar, Seyed Ali Sajjadi, Zahra Aghalari

Published in: Globalization and Health | Issue 1/2019

Abstract

Background

Scientific cooperation is one of the effective methods to access current knowledge and technologies and also to use successful experiences of researchers in developed countries by academicians living in developing countries. This study aimed to determine the level of international contribution in compilation of scientific articles in Iranian journals published in the field of environmental health engineering.

Methods

This descriptive and retrospective study was conducted within a 10-year period (2008–2017), in which all articles published in five specialized Iranian journals of environmental health engineering were reviewed using a researcher-made checklist. The information collected in the checklist included: the year of publication, number of issues and articles, information about the status of authors’ participation in terms of number of authors, sex, institutional affiliation, country, continents, and research centers. Descriptive and inferential statistics such as index of dispersion, measures of central tendency, and Chi-square and t tests were used to statistically analyze the data. Besides, VOSviewer software was used to visualize the data.

Results

The review of 1276 articles published in 102 issues of the five journals of environmental health engineering in Iran showed that 184 articles were written with the participation of researchers from other countries. Most articles with the participation of international authors during the last decade were published in 2014. Chi-square test indicated a significant difference in the publication of these articles within 2014–2015 than other years (P = 0.001). Among the five journals, the best participation of international researchers was observed in J Environ Health Sci Engineer (168 articles, 91.3%). Considering the number of joint articles with Iran, the top continents were Asia, Europe, and Africa each with 117, 52, and 32 articles, respectively. India, Turkey, and Malaysia had the highest level of cooperation with Iranian researchers with 53, 16, and 14 articles, respectively. 637 authors contributed in 184 articles, of whom 469 (73.6%) were male and 121 (18.9%) were female. T test was used to compare the mean number of male and female authors in the articles with or without the participation of international researchers, which showed no significant difference.

Conclusion

International contribution of researchers in compilation of specialized environmental health articles was good. Given the low level of cooperation between researchers from developed European and American countries and their Iranian counterparts, it seems necessary to adopt different methods to attract more collaboration from researchers working in developed countries considering their significant role in health-related areas.

LiuEmail HY, BartonovaA PM, Smolders R, Skjetne E, Dusinska M. Approaches to Integrated monitoring for environmental health impact assessment. Environ Health. 2012;11:88. https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-069X-11-88.CrossRef

Araban M, Tavafian SS, Zarandi SM, et al. Introducing a new measure for assessing self-efficacy in response to air pollution hazards for pregnant women. J Environ Health Sci Eng. 2013;11:16. https://doi.org/10.1186/2052-336X-11-16.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed

Ebadifar A, Mesdaghinia A, Baradaran Eftekhari M, Falahat K. Assessment of environmental Health Research centers in Iran due to knowledge production and utilization. J Environ Health Sci Eng. 2018;16:1–6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-018-0293-7.CrossRef

Hambling T, Weinstein P, Slaney D. Slaney, a review of frameworks for developing environmental health indicators for climate change and health. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2011;8:1–22. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8072854.CrossRef

Khasseh A, Fakhar M, Soosaraei M, Sadeghi S. Evaluation of scientific performance of Iranian researchers in parasitology domain in ISI databases. Iran J Med Microbiol. 2011;4(4):41–50. http://ijmm.ir/article-1-26-en.html.

He Z-L, Geng X-S. Campbell-hunt research collaboration and research output: a longitudinal study of 65 biomedical scientists in a new Zealand university. Res Policy. 2009;38:306–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2008.11.011.CrossRef

Wagner CS, Brahmakulam IT, Jackson BA, Wong A, Yoda T. Science & Technology Collaboration: Building Capacity in Developing Countries? Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation; 2001. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1357z0.html. Also available in print form.

Bordons M, Gomez I. Collaboration Networks in Science. The web of knowledge: a festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield. B. Cronin and HB Atkins. Information Today . 2000; 197–213.

Merlin G. Pragmatism and self-organization: research collaboration on the individual level. Res Policy. 2000;29:31–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(99)00031-1.CrossRef

10.

Harirchi G, Melin G, Etemad S. An exploratory study of the feature of Iranian co-authorships in biology, chemistry and physics. Scientometrics. 2007;27:11–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1693-0.CrossRef

11.

Lolis SF, A. M. M S-M, S. L. A R, Benedito E. Scientometric analysis of energetic ecology: primary production of aquatic macrophytes. Maringá. 2009;31(4):363–9. https://doi.org/10.4025/actascibiolsci.v31i4.5139.CrossRef

12.

SweilehEmail WM, Zyoud SH, Al-Jabi SW, Sawalha AF. Public, environmental, and occupational health research activity in Arab countries: bibliometric, citation, and collaboration analysis. Arch Public Health. 2014;73(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/2049-3258-73-1.

13.

De Battisti F, Salini S. Robust analysis of bibliometric data. Stat Methods Appl. 2013;22:269–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10260-012-0217-0.CrossRef

14.

Royle J, Louisa C, Dorothy W, Paul E. Publishing in international journals. Scientometrics. 2007;71(1):59–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1648-5.CrossRef

15.

Hayati Z, Didegah F. International scientific collaboration among Iranian researchers during 1998-2007. Library Hi Tech. 2010;28(3):433–46. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378831011076675.CrossRef

16.

Tirgar A, Abolghasemi MB, Yaminfirooz M. Citation analysis of graduate Dental thesis references: Before and after an intervention. Future Med Educ J. 2013;3(1):2–7. https://doi.org/10.22038/FMEJ.2013.515.CrossRef

17.

Aghalari Z, Tirgar A. Topics of disasters in scientific outputs of medical sciences: a cross-sectional study. Health Emerg Disasters Q. 2017;2(2):47–52. https://doi.org/10.18869/nrip.hdq.2.2.47.CrossRef

18.

Van Eck NJ, Waltman L. VOSviewer: A computer program for bibliometric mapping. In Larsen, B. and Leta, J. editors, Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics. 2009; 886–897. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3.

19.

Zhang C, Yu Q, Fan Q, Duan Z. Research collaboration in health management research communities. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2013;13(52). https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6947-13-52.

20.

Zyoud SH, Zyoud SH, Al-Jabi SW, Sweileh WM, Awang R. Contribution of Arab countries to pharmaceutical wastewater literature: a bibliometric and comparative analysis of research output. Ann Occup Environ Med. 2016;28:1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40557-016-0117-0.CrossRef

21.

Soteriades ES, Falagas ME. A bibliometric analysis in the fields of preventive medicine, occupational and environmental medicine, epidemiology, and public health. BMC Public Health. 2006;6:301. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-6-301.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed

22.

ChoiEmail K, Paek D, Wu T, Chan CC, Onchang R, Padungtod C, Koizumi A. Asian forum on environmental health policy: challenges and perspectives of environmental health problems in the region in the next 30 years. Environ Health Prev Med. 2012;17:269. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12199-012-0269-7.CrossRef

23.

Tabatabaei-Malazy O, Ramezani A, Atlasi R, Larijani B, Abdollahi M. Scientometric study of academic publications on antioxidative herbal medicines in type 2 diabetes mellitus. J Diabetes Metab Disord. 2016;15:48. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40200-016-0273-3.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed

24.

Pless IB, Stein RK, Walker D. Research consortium on children with chronic conditions (RCCCC): a vehicle for interdisciplinary collaborative research. Matern Child Health J. 2010;14:9–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-009-0484-z.CrossRefPubMed

25.

Resnick JC. Increasing opportunity through interdisciplinary research: climbing down and shattering a tower of babel. Front Psychiatry. 2011;2(20). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2011.00020.

26.

European Commission. The Gender Challenge in Research Funding – Assessing the European national scenes Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. 2009. ISBN 978-92-79-10599-9. https://doi.org/10.2777/36195, https://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/pub_gender_equality/gender-challenge-in-research-funding_en.pdf.

27.

Sidhu R, Rajashekhar P, Lavin VL, Parry J, Attwood J, Holdcroft A, et al. The gender imbalance in academic medicine: a study of female authorship in the United Kingdom. J R Soc Med. 2009;102:337–42. https://doi.org/10.1258/jrsm.2009.080378.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed

28.

Amrein K, Langmann A, Fahrleitner-Pammer A, Pieber TR, Zollner-Schwetz I. Women underrepresented on editorial boards of 60 major medical journals. Gend Med. 2011;8:378–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.genm.2011.10.007.CrossRefPubMed

Title: The status of international collaborations in compilation of Iranian scientific articles on environmental health engineering
Authors: Aram Tirgar
Seyed Ali Sajjadi
Zahra Aghalari
Publication date: 01-12-2019
Publisher: BioMed Central
Keyword: Environmental Medicine
Published in: Globalization and Health / Issue 1/2019
Electronic ISSN: 1744-8603
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-019-0460-3

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

Springer Medicine

The status of international collaborations in compilation of Iranian scientific articles on environmental health engineering

Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

Springer Medicine

Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Please log in to get access to this content

Other articles of this Issue 1/2019

Pension and state funds dominating biomedical R&D investment: fiduciary duty and public health

Health sector fragmentation: three examples from Sierra Leone

Contradictions within the SDGs: are sin taxes for health improvement at odds with employment and economic growth in Zambia

Health and health needs of migrants in detention in Greece: shedding light to an unknown reality

Extent, nature and consequences of performing outside scope of training in global health

The effect of community-based programs on diabetes prevention in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis