A Decade of Activity of the Medical Journal of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences through Scientometric Method (2010-2019)

Background. Journals are one of the channels of scientific communication among experts in the specialized fields of human knowledge as well as a tool for the rapid and widespread dissemination of new research achievements. Publishers of scientific journals need to match their publications to the level of subjects and researcher collaboration of academic journals. This study aimed to analyze the scientometrics of a decade of the Medical Journal of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences publications.
Methods. The method of this research was scientometric analysis. The statistical population included Tabriz Medical Journal articles indexed in the Islamic World Science Citation Database (ISC) from 2010 to 2019. After analyzing the papers, we acquired the necessary data by conducting an "Advanced Search" for the journal's title on the Iranian Science Citation Index website and limited the results to the needed publication years. Four software including BibExcel, Ucinet, NetDraw, and VOS-Weaver were used for data analysis.
Results. Tabriz Medical Journal published 794 articles written by 1947 authors. The authors' names were repeated 3,111 times in all articles. The average number of authors for each article was 3.92. The citation effect (average citation per article) was 0.36. Each article included an average of 21.56 citations. There were 31 single-authored papers and 763 scientific collaborations between two or more researchers. The co-authored template included four authors. The largest co-authorship network consisted of 92 authors. There were 2,449 keywords used to describe 794 articles. These keywords were repeated 3,118 times in various articles. The most common keywords and their frequencies were as following: children (20), rat (19), and polymorphism (17). Thematic clusters included "quality of life", "type 1 diabetes", "aerobic activity", "antibiotic resistance", "breast cancer", "type 2 diabetes", "cardiovascular disease", "drinking water", and "stress and depression”.
Conclusion. The results of this study indicated the existence of effective scientific collaborations among authors based on the patterns of journal article writing. All thematic clusters complied with the journal’s thematic axes and specializations. The average number of citations per article was 0.36 percent, indicating that the citation rate for the journal publications had to be improved. Journal indexing in international databases positively impacts the citation rate of journal articles. Therefore, it is suggested that new measures be developed to enhance the journal’s visibility and impact factor.