TEHRAN – Iran ranked third for the highly cited researchers in the world among Islamic countries in 2020, according to the recently published report of Highly Cited Researchers by Web of Science.

Among the world's top researchers, 13 Islamic countries are listed, which hold a share of 3 percent (2.85%) among the world's top researchers.

Saudi Arabia with 120 researchers, Malaysia with 17, Iran with 12, and Turkey with 11 researchers have the highest number of highly cited researchers among Islamic countries.

To be included in the list of top researchers, all scientific activities over the last 10 years are evaluated at the international level, including the number of articles, number of citations, number of highly cited articles, number of citations to highly cited articles, as well as issues such as observing ethical principles in research.

So, approximately 6,389 researchers have been selected as highly cited researchers in 2020.

From Iran in 2020, similar to 2019, 12 top researchers have been included in the list of 6,389 top-cited researchers in the world.

The country's top researchers have been in the cross-field (6 people), agricultural sciences (2 people), mathematics (2 people), and engineering (2 people), respectively.

The United States is home to the highest number of Highly Cited Researchers, with 2,650 authors, representing 41.5 percent of the researchers on the list. China, home to 770 researchers is the second country has the highest concentration of Highly Cited Researchers in the world. The United Kingdom is also a hotbed of talent, with 514 authors, and Germany, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and France are all home to over 150 researchers each.

Top scientific articles

Iran's share of the world's top scientific articles is 3 percent, Gholam Hossein Rahimi She’erbaf, the deputy science minister, said in October.

The country’s share in the whole publications worldwide is 2 percent, he noted, highlighting, for the first three consecutive years, Iran has been ranked first in terms of quantity and quality of articles among Islamic countries.

Iranian articles rank 16 and 15 in Web of Science and Scopus, respectively.

The Journal Citation Reports 2019 ranking includes 42 journals from Iran, including the Journal of Nanostructure in Chemistry with an impact factor of 4.077.

Iranian scientific journals such as the Journal of Nanostructures (affiliated to Kashan University), Nanomedicine Journal (Mashhad University of Medical Sciences), Journal of Nanoanalysis (Tehran University of Medical Sciences) were listed in the ESCI index of WOS database.

Moreover, the Journal of Water and Environmental Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine Research Journal, and International Nanoscience and Nanotechnology were also listed in the Scopus Index.

FB/MG