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

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.

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.

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.

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.