Domestic versus international Iranian transplantation publication: a comparative study

Scientific articles are a source of information for other researchers. The aim of the current study was to compare the characteristics of the transplantation related research efforts which have been published in domestic journals and Medline indexed journals from Iran between 1993 and 2003.

Within the study period, 601 transplantation scientific papers had been published from Iran, either in 91 domestic (www.iranmedex.com) or international journals (www.ncbi.com) for all the biomedical articles published between 1993 and 2003 in 91 Iranian journals. The search was conducted using "transplantation" or "transplant" as key words. A printed copy of the papers (if available) was reviewed to identify the transplanted organ, study design, number of authors, and type of article.

Among 601 articles, 545 (90.6%) had been published in domestic journals, and 56 (9.4%) in Medline indexed journals. Frequency of original articles was significantly higher among domestic journals (84.4% vs. 62.5%, p=0.001). The organ type was not significantly different between domestic or Medline indexed journals (61.7%, 71.4%, p=0.556). Mean author numbers was significantly less among domestic in comparison to Medline indexed journals (3.6+/-2.2 vs. 4.6+/-3.0, p=0.047).

It seems that Iranian scientific database is a more important database, not only by means of quantity, but also by means of research characteristics, such as originality of research. So, domestic scientific databases should be regarded as a pool of valuable information, and should be introduced to researchers of other countries, such as Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation region.